


cards on the table

by marsboers



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: 14-15 year old Losers, Canon Compliant, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Everyone Loves Mike Hanlon, F/M, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Gay Richie Tozier, High School, I Love Patricia Blum Uris, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Minor Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, OT7 Friendship, Period-Typical Homophobia, Prom, References galore, Richie Tozier Being an Asshole, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, School Dances, Self-Indulgent, Slow Burn, Stanley Uris Loves Patricia Blum Uris, This has everything in it, an ongoing game of prom/marry/kill, at least as canon compliant as possible considering the circumstances, bev's aunt is ... mom..... 2!, bev/ben/bill tension in the background. blink and you miss it, everyone but bill knows, everyone loves bill, i wrote this while high and it shows, indulge yourselves as i did, it's the slice of life slow burn reddie prom fic you never wanted!, just completely self indulgent only god can judge me, like an ungodly amount of references to the safety dance, looots lots lots of fluff, lots of filler and dialogue, lots of flashbacks, richie picks up the term 'unclench' from stan, richie's parents are GOOD, schrodinger's unclench, stan picks up the term 'unclench' from richie, stanley uris' epic tupperware and portable cutlery, the cheesefest is unreal, the clown's hibernating but they're still traumatised and haunted by it, the tozier residence is basically eddie's second home, the works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:49:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 41,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21884767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marsboers/pseuds/marsboers
Summary: “Boys, this will be ourfirstofficial school dance.”“We’ve had dances before, Richie—”“Our firstrealdance, compadre. I’m talking glamor, formal suits, party dresses,corsages, et boutonnieres,” he finishes with an appalling French accent. All of them grimace at it. “I wouldn’t exactly consider a sweaty Eddie doing theSafety Dancein the corner of the gym all by his lonesome in jeans and aThundercatsshirt as homecoming queen material.”
Relationships: Ben Hanscom & Richie Tozier, Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Beverly Marsh & Richie Tozier, Bill Denbrough & Eddie Kaspbrak & Richie Tozier & Stanley Uris, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris, The Losers Club & The Losers Club (IT)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 103





	cards on the table

**Author's Note:**

> i've got a [spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/56W6UhRLAVu2zFu3LiaEbp?si=hWXRwhIuQAmPyntPTUw9YA) you can optionally listen to along with this that's made up of the songs mentioned and specific tracks that i listened to while writing different scenes
> 
> \- i wrote this for my birthday so be nice.  
> \- this fic is loosely based on and inspired by [eddiebrak’s school dance au gifset!](https://eddiebrak.tumblr.com/post/188852893130/reddie-school-dance-au)  
> \- this was written as canon-compliant as possible with, of course, room for my indulgence. mainly 2017 film focused but uses some very small vague aspects from the book - nothing you gotta worry about at all if you haven’t read it, it’s just background flavor  
> \- biggest thing i really changed from canon is how stan meets patty i think  
> \- idc about the richie's awful parents meta!!!! let him have fun parents!!! let me have my escapist prom fantasy!!!  
> \- tags say it all but it's pretty much 80% filler and exposition because i love writing dialogue and pointless filler scenes  
> \- they're 14-15 and starting high school. 2 years after it (2017)

1991 in the summer-going-on-autumnal bubble of Derry, Maine was a special time. As special as a secluded small town like Derry _can_ be, that is. A convenient transition into ninth grade with no need to think about transferring schools was an opportunity that came with relief to most, and dread pooling within the guts of others. For the Losers, it was a mix of both, but mostly the latter. It meant starting their first year in the same school that had plagued them growing up. The most critical time of change and growth for a teenager and they felt stuck. 

That isn’t to say the easy transition did not come without _any_ changes, however.

A world previously detached from them was now present and available - the world of a high school tween. The world of puberty and growth spurts and consequential cliques and high school sweethearts that fizzle and fade under the weight of expectations and rocky futures. The world of glamorized events witnessed prior only at their most ideal in film and television - prom, homecoming, Sadie’s, sports events taken as seriously as the Super Bowl - you name it. No more Derry-brand pep rallies for events that never came. No more awkward middle school dances in the most absurd no-effort outfits - jeans with neon tutus, striped legwarmers with church dresses, stained polos that were worn to class the day before and mothers’ kooky jewelry worn by both boys and girls alike. Derry kept it simple and would have continued to keep it simple even into senior graduation were it not for the outrage of the student body. 

_We can excuse violent bullying and academic abuse but God forbid we’re not allowed to have one good dance, one good film-like classic American school dance,_ is how it went.

They say _'what happens in high school, stays in high school’_ , whoever _they_ are. Richie, usually. In fact, amidst the plethora of ice breakers, daft conversation topics, and terrible jokes, this was one idiom he could not stop himself from repeating over and over again throughout the entire last year of eighth grade and the summer that followed. 

“Oh for crying out loud… Richie!” Stan cuts him off with a bark. “It’s summer. Are you, _you,_ of _all_ people, _seriously_ going to be talking about school the entire time?”

“It _is_ a nn-nice change of pace, though,” Bill says with a grin.

“ _Stanley_ ,” Richie drawls with a flimsy taken aback hand over his chest. “If I don’t keep reminding you all then how will you sweet innocent virgins _ever_ make it out there? It’s a dog-eat-dog world, Stan. You need to be prepared. I’m doing you a _favor_ ,” and Stanley huffs a laugh that was more bite than humored.

They’re all in the clubhouse, bar one - Beverly. She departed Derry promptly after the unforgettable summer of ‘89 and left behind a lonely fiery gap that the boys had at one point shamefully tried to fill. There was no one else like her, no one who could ever replace her, and they hated themselves for even attempting to. But it was like this: once they knew what it was like having someone like Bev, they were desperate to hold onto the sorely-missed dynamic. Weekly, then monthly, then nonexistent letters and phone calls from her was a reality that hurt too much, and an unspoken thought fell over the lot of them that they may never hear from or see Beverly ever again. Sure, Bill, Richie, and Stan had acquainted themselves with some new faces since, but none of them could ever live up to her name. None of them had the makings of capital _L_ Losers.

There’s a makeshift “couch” made out of two old sofa cushions, courtesy of the Denbrough Yard Sale of 1990 (the couch itself in its entirety was much too large for the clubhouse entryway), and two ottomans from Mike’s farmhouse. They were small and unused old things that had a better life once upon a time, and his grandfather seemed initially quite reluctant to let them go before steeling himself before his grandson. It was always that hard outer-shelled first impression first and sentiment later with him, but if the damn things weren’t going to be loved, then Mike certainly made sure they would be.

Stan, Ben, and Eddie are sandwiched on the couch, Richie is on the ground to Stan’s right, Bill is directly across from the trio, sat on a small stump of log they found near the barrens, and to his right sits Mike, cross-legged on the ground. In the middle of their circle lays _The Game Of Life_ , with fake paper money and small laminated cards littered about. They’re all playing, but agreed on Ben doubling as the banker this time. It’s usually Ben or Mike who get the role, them being the only two in their group they can trust not to cheat. Stan gets flashes of bewilderment sometimes, thinking how on earth they managed to play this game when it was just him, Bill, Richie, and Eddie. 

“Boys, this will be our _first_ official school dance.”

“We’ve had dances before, Richie—”

“Our first _real_ dance, compadre. I’m talking glamor, formal suits, party dresses, _corsages, et boutonnieres,_ ” he finishes with an appalling French accent. All of them grimace at it. “I wouldn’t exactly consider a sweaty Eddie doing the _Safety Dance_ in the corner of the gym all by his lonesome in jeans and a _Thundercats_ shirt as homecoming queen material.”

“Oh my God, _do_ you know how to shut up?” the accused snaps, flicking the spinner on the board game. Eddie lands a 7 and the bank pays Bill $10,000 for investing in a 7-roll stock card earlier. 

“Do you think we could invite Bev?” Ben pipes in with embarrassing hope in his voice once they’re all done snorting and snickering at the mental image of Eddie aggressively making _S-shaped_ poses with his arms. “Would that be weird?”

“I don-don’t think it’s weird,” Bill smiles sadly. “But she-she’ll have school t-too, right?”

“You _know_ she’ll skip for us,” Richie grins.

“Yeah, exactly, and anyway, isn’t Portland just an hour away?”

“Two,” Ben corrects Eddie. Eddie gestures at him like the point behind his question still stands.

“Does she even remember us?”

They all turn to Stan. His brows are furrowed in confusion, not annoyance. He has a point, and they all know it but refuse to acknowledge it - _can’t_ acknowledge it. It had been almost two years since she left for Portland, and their last phone call with her was around their last day of summer in 1990. A whole year. Then their entire focus shifted onto the last torturous exam-filled year they had left to complete before starting the perilous world of high school. None of them could afford to flunk, especially not after Stan worked tirelessly to successfully skip a grade and join the other Losers in their own. But Beverly was contradicting, strange, _distant._ It seemed the longer they went without contact the more she hesitated at the sound of their voices, yet at the same time, she’d fall back into familiar comfort and banter with gratuitous ease within seconds.

One night she cried to Bill, terrified of her vague and fuzzy memories of Derry. She didn’t understand, and neither did he, but he did what he did best: comforting and reassuring her that it was perfectly fine and normal and happened to everyone. It broke his heart hearing it though. Some microscopic selfish part of him felt irrational about the entire situation, thinking how on earth _anyone_ could forget what they went through in such a swift, short time, but the rational and understanding _Bill_ part at his core heard the real, raw pain and guilt crying out in her horrified voice with poignant recognition and knew there was no blame to be placed on any single one of them for how they coped. It was perfectly fine and normal and happened to everyone.

“Of-of course she does,” Bill says when no one answers. “She has a d-diff-different life there. We just have to- to call and, and she’ll know.” He’s firm in his statement and belief as always despite the ironic stutter, a firmness and faith that is contagious to the others. They remain quiet, but the spark of hope has been planted. They loved Bill for it. 

“What makes you think she’ll want to come to _Derry_ for a school dance when she’s probably got some _hot stuff_ over there that’ll no doubt sweep her off her feet on Portland’s dance floor?” Richie leans back on his arms after he finishes his turn.

Mike laughs, “What happened to ‘ _you_ knooow _she’ll skip for us’_?” His mock imitation of Richie was much whinier than he actually sounded, earning a round of chuckles and smirks from the group.

“I’m _sorry_ , I meant she’ll _obviously_ skip for _me,_ _buuuut_ … you guys?” Richie scrunches his face and sharply inhales with a hiss. 

“I don’t know why you’re even talking about the dance when no one with a right mind would ever want to go with you.”

“Dearest Edward, I’ll have you know I have a surplus of young maidens lining up _as I speak_ , begging, _begging_ I tell you, for a spare second of a moment with the one and only brave Sir Richard of the B—”

“Okay, _yeah_ , sure, and where are they?”

“Sadly I’ve had to break all of their little hearts because you see, there’s room for only _one_ very special girl in my life. My _light,_ my _moon,_ my _soon-to-be Mrs Tozier_ _—_ ”

Eddie cuts him off with a loud groan into the hands he’s now dragging down his own face - _‘Why did I even ask?’_ \- and Richie’s grin is so wide it reaches his eyes.

“Actually Eds, do you think you could ask Mrs K if she could chaperone the dance this year?” 

“Fuck you, I’d rather die slow from an enterovirus. And don’t call me that.”

“Woah! _Hetero_ Virus? _That_ serious, huh? Is your _Safety Dance_ _that_ bad?” Richie gawks, leans forward and rests his palms on his knees.

Eddie purses his lips, gracing him with an expression that can only be read as remarkably fuming. Stan is rolling his eyes and the rest are snickering under their noses, taking their turns in the game on the floor that is slowly being forgotten by the conversation.

“My mom actually wanted to chaperone, you know?” Ben says with wide eyes, followed by a happily shocked chorus of _no way!_ and _that’s crazy!_ “I’m serious!” He pays the bank the amount he owes. “I love her, but I _had_ to talk her out of it.”

“ _Mis-sus Hans-com…_ ” Richie sing songs, waggling his eyebrows, then wolf whistles. Ben shakes his head and laughs, and Eddie’s eyes roll so far into the back of his head he can’t help the brief panic that flashes in his mind that he maybe just might lose them back there for good. 

“Well, anyway, p-puh-p—, _homecoming_ , isn’t until November s-so... why even worry about it now?” Bill spins and collects a _Life_ tile. His fifth.

“At least I don’t have to worry about it at all,” Mike says. He smiles as if relieved, but his eyes are trained intensely on the board.

There’s a short pondering silence before the boys start spitting out ideas. Sneaking him in, hosting another prom at his farmhouse, or the barrens and the clubhouse, ditching the dance entirely and going to the movies instead- _Mike, I love you, but we_ can’t _ditch,_ says Richie. _Good, because I’m going to be so mad with you if you do,_ Mike responds gravely. The boys are genuinely startled by how menacing his timidly empty threat actually came across. 

“Let’s face the facts,” Richie faces his palms out to them, giving the boys a pointed look over the top of his frames, as though he’s about to pitch the greatest idea ever conceived to a board of businessmen. “Everyone here, with the humble exception of myself, will be dateless.” He pauses for drama but the boys flip him off and turn their attention back to the game.

“No, listen! Just go stag with Mike! You can circle him like- like you’re the secret service,” he snaps his fingers and points. “Mike, you’re the president. The VIP of the night. You can take cover and hide in the _Loser Service Circle_ if any narcs look at you. No one else will care; too busy humping and making out.” Eddie imitates a gag and Richie waves a ‘ _you’ve-heard-worse’_ hand in his direction. “But you’re gonna look so fucking cool. That air of importance, an escort of bodyguards, a powerful handsome leader…” Richie’s look is bright and distant, envisioning the scene a little too vividly. 

“I—” Mike starts.

“You think that’s going to _actually_ work?” Stan asks, not really expecting a serious answer.

“Yeah, I appreciate it, Rich. But I don’t think that will… I mean… I don’t know,” Mike fiddles with his fingers. Truthfully, he doesn’t want to shoot down the possibilities of the outlandish idea.

“They can’t kick you out if you’re invited as a date or a plus-one, even if you don’t go to the school,” Ben suggests. “Hopefully that’s how we’ll get Beverly in.”

“Can stags even bring plus-ones?” Stan asides with a squint.

“What if we get dates and can’t go stag?”

Richie guffaws at Eddie. 

“ _Dates?! Eddie-bear, you need not worry a single hair on your head about such naughty and unholy things,_ ” he waggles a finger, a pale imitation of the former’s mother. 

“Your ‘Sonia’ really needs some work,” Eddie deadpans. 

“What, you think you’ll _actually_ have a date?” Richie is still grinning until his smile tightens at the implication. Camouflaged to the others, exposed to himself. He leans back on his arms again.

“I don’t know! I said _what if!”_

“Bev will want to go with someone,” Bill comments, nudging Richie’s knee with his foot and pointing to the game, signalling his turn. 

Eddie, Stan, and Mike sneak a quick glance at Ben, who is wearing the saddest flush of pink cheeks they’ve maybe ever seen. Stan clears his throat.

“I don’t think I’ll be going stag,” he mutters and adds a quick ‘ _sorry, Mike’_ that the latter boy waves off with a smile.

Richie, Bill and Eddie’s heads shoot up, however, exchanging wide astonished eyes with one another, then at Stan, and back again. 

“Stanley Uris, are you _sweet_ on someone?” Richie gawks. Stanley shrugs, suddenly much more interested in organizing his fake paper money and _Life_ tiles into neat, tidy piles. He has $74,000 and 6 tiles, currently in the lead.

Bill’s mouth is open and delighted, Eddie’s eyebrows are somewhere in his hairline, and Richie is taking part in the extremely rare and miraculous Tozier event of speechlessness. Ben and Mike’s smiles are sweet and overjoyed, but calm as though this wasn’t news to them in the slightest.

“You’re so full of shit, Stan,” Eddie shoves him in the shoulder but his mouth is still an open _O_ that’s slowly curling upwards into a smile. He feels hysterical. “You’re shitting us, right?”

Stan purses his lips, raises his brows and shakes his head. A choked laugh escapes a beaming Bill.

“What’s his _name?”_ Richie yells, the epitome of glee, smacking both palms down against the ground on either side of him.

Stan shoots a middle-finger his way but promptly licks his lips, and there’s a thoughtful mirth in his shy downcast eyes. “I met her this summer. At that summer camp thing my dad made me go to.”

“ _Thank_ you, _dad!”_ Richie exclaims in sing-song, and the boys join in with excited outbursts of agreement and laughter. Stan rolls his eyes at the lot of them, but he’s smiling. 

“Patricia,” and then a silent moment. “Patty,” he says quieter.

But he was heard because the boys whoop and holler and reach over to clap him endearingly on shoulders and arms and knees and legs that he frantically tries to block. The game and the school dance that is three months away is forgotten when they start demanding a million details from a very embarrassed Stan. 

* * *

2 September 1991. 

The Losers Club officially began ninth grade. The very first day of their first high school year. To be honest, nothing is really different. Sure, they’ve grown, and are still growing - breaking height records and voices, longer and sweatier limbs requiring an almost endless supply of new clothing (or in Richie and Mike’s cases, their fathers’ old clothes) and sharp features slowly but surely escaping the confines of baby fat - but for the most part, despite the abundance of new emotions and sensations that come with teenagehood, they remain the same. The same tight-knit group of friends they were since infancy, from when they were a team of four and grew to a seven. 

They’re freshmen: Fresh bait. Bottom of the food chain. Again. But things look up when Bowers’ gang finally realise a year too late that Henry is actually gone for good, and the Losers have no reason to be afraid anymore in their chicken-shit lackey presence. They’re a unit, and they’re strong together. 

They’d be lying if they said they weren’t still on edge when alone, though. Bill is strong-hearted and strong-willed, but a heavy thinker, and his thoughts sometimes aren’t particularly the kindest. Ben has felt like the luckiest guy in all of Derry since meeting Bev and the Losers, but his luck is at war with his deeply rooted sense of loneliness that he sometimes doesn’t even recognise as loneliness, but instead, as his norm. Stan decided that he is his own man, and stands by himself stronger and firmer than he’s ever had, but he is gripped by the daunting claws of failure and disappointment. Mike has found balance for himself, equal weights of steady tenacity and raw, kind compassion, but Derry is a challenging force intent on tipping the scales. Eddie is determined in his bravery that he feels is newfound, and triumphantly houses the fight that burns within him, a forever-burning hot flame, but the wavering presence of his hesitation and safe confidence in his mother who both _lies_ and _tells truths_ is a threatening wind blowing against his fire. The wind seems a friendly companion at first, helpful blows that keep the flame alive, but he knows that at any moment that safe, familiar wind is capable of landing the final blow of an extinguishing gust.

Now Richie… Richie is the real outsider, he thinks. He feels he has no positive factor followed by a ‘ _but’_ like the rest of them do. Under the masked guise of gross-out comedy and acting that only shrivels as he gets older, is a liar. A liar who lies to keep the truth at bay. He decides late one night that he is, in fact, the opposite of the Losers: a complex bag of negative factors and traits followed by a _but_ that leads to something hopeful, positive, and wonderful - something he is more afraid of than any world-eating clown or violent threat. And he thinks on this, ponders real hard on it, and decides that what he hates more than anything is how painfully aware he is of the irrational stupidity of it all. It leaves a strain on him, a headache born out of annoyance, one that he’s been feeling more regularly the closer it gets to _Promcoming_ (as he’s dubbed it). And it’s so stupid and trivial and he could _not_ be able to tell you why the school dance of all things is what grips at his guts and twists them into impossible knots.

He could not, because he didn’t want to. He could not because the _why_ had large brown doe eyes and dark hair that curls at the ends and a sailor’s mouth of a siren’s call and a fanny pack that found its way back around the waist of the boy who had initially thrown it away in emancipating rage. He didn’t want to… but he _did_. Very much so, in fact. 

At fifteen years of age, Richie plays several dangerous games of reverse psychology with himself. A game of cat and mouse. A game of _Hungry Hungry Hippos._ A game of _Mouse Trap._ A game of _Operation._ A _Game Of Life_.

A game of _Street Fighter_ that he’s long since disowned from his life. ‘ _No more Street Fighter training?’_ Eddie had quipped while emptying his backpack in the late May of 1990. ‘ _Finally come to your senses?’_ he said. But the teasing snark and bite disappeared when Richie had not stepped foot in the Derry arcade that entire summer, and the summer the following year. Maybe it was strange enough to raise concern, maybe it wasn’t, but Richie was otherwise the same old Trashmouth they’d always known. The same old Richie whose second love, followed by Eddie’s mom, had always been the arcade. Maybe. 

It’s been a little over a month since they returned to the drab routine of education, and the dance had officially become the only topic of conversation in the entire school, maybe even in all of Derry. It’s strange to think that when they were younger the buzz of this event went completely over their heads, yet ‘school’ and ‘dance’ were now maybe the only two words left in the vocabulary of the entire unified student body. Their own middle school dances were nothing to phone home about: nothing more than lessons cancelled in the afternoon of an ordinary school day and walking single-file to an undecorated gym hall with plastic cups of cheap brandless soda and a math teacher who knew nothing about DJing taking up the mantle.

But there are promposals happening daily down every corridor, streamers and banners and drawn posters already decorating every nook and cranny, black markets in the backs of classrooms of boys and girls exchanging scheming plans and giggling gossip. 

Richie listens in on one of these exchanges during a particularly slow lesson about imaginary numbers, real numbers, complex numbers - the whole algebraic shebang. Jennie Hall is the topic, a senior that either didn’t go or bailed after the first song, spending the night instead with a group of quote-unquote _friends_ with a private party in a wood clearing somewhere. _Or a basement_ , says boy one. _Likely a basement_ , says girl two. _Definitely a basement_ , says girl three. Richie starts to think she may have been onto something with ditching the whole damn thing.

They’re all at Bill’s house on a Saturday.

“Hello?” comes an older voice through the receiver, and Bill shyly asks for Beverly as though it were his very first time speaking to Bev’s aunt.

“...hello?” It’s Bev this time, and as Bill expected, she sounds hesitant and lost. He shoots a glance to the boys sat around the Denbrough’s plush new couch where they were watching _Back To The Future_ for maybe the hundredth time (Ben insisted, said something about _prom inspiration_ , and they decided it was a fair enough point), but he’s met with five intense pairs of eyes staring right back at him instead.

“Uh, hi Bev. It’s- it’s Bill,” he pauses for a second. “ _Denbrough,_ ” he adds quietly, but not quiet enough. Bill can feel Stan’s sad frown from across the room.

“Bill…” she mutters and repeats his name several times, and if it were an incantation, Bill prays that it works. The sudden gasp he hears is like a dream and the tension he didn’t even realize he was carrying in his shoulders floats away.

“Oh… oh my God,” her voice wavers and muffles towards the end. She has a hand over her mouth. 

“I know, I know, it’s okay,” Bill repeats like a mantra, his own soothing incantation that he begs can reach her through the line.

“It happened again- it happened a— I don’t… I don’t under- but I try- I _tried_ , I don’t—” she’s struggling to form words, let alone sentences, and Bill is overflowing with sympathy. It’s so out of place to hear Bev so rattled and meek and quiet that she almost feels like a stranger.

It has been a year, but Bill’s voice is a welcome sting on her palm and an itch in her mind. An itch she’s trying so desperately to scratch and relieve.

“Come on, you remember D- _Derry_ ,” Bill says with a forced companionable laugh, giving her the subtle helping hand without revealing to the other boys that she _did_ , in fact, forget them as Stan had thought. Forgot them _again._

“Derry… Derry!” and she’s starting to sound lighter in tone and spirit, familiarity flooding back in strong and gentle waves. She’s almost made it to shore.

Bill hears the smile in her voice and decides it’s a good enough time to bring the handset and receiver over to the boys on the couch, the long cord tugging behind him. They shout their greetings and friendly teasing quips into the phone with the elegance of a litter of overexcited puppies and Bill has to hold it far away from himself. They’re a boisterous mess, utterly incomprehensible, overlapping each other as each tries to be the loudest and clearest for Bev to hear and respond to.

“Guys!” Her laugh is a familiar melody, bright and contagious. “You crazy kids! _Crazy, crazy_ kids!” she croons back to them, gleefully high pitched between gasps of air and further laughter. 

“Kids? _Kids?!_ ” Richie yells back in outrage. “How about you drive that sweet little butt back to the ninth circle of hell otherwise known as Derry, Maine and take a _good long hard look_ at these _kids_ of yours!” 

“We’re _men_ , Beverly. _Men,_ ” Eddie quacks, voice almost as high like it used to be at twelve, cutting a hand through the air in the receiver’s direction.

“Yeah… well… _most_ of us are men, that is,” Richie says with a pointed look at Eddie. “ _Some_ of us are still a _little_ behind in the race— _aghck!”_ he chokes as Eddie chops a hand into his throat.

“Bev, come to prom!” Ben exclaims in a moment of boldness over the bickering boys.

“What?” she laughs, breathless. Mike, Eddie, and Ben start chanting ‘come to prom’ over and over.

“Yeah, there’s going to be a dance. It’s kind of a homecoming, though. But- but just the p-pro-prom part. So... so a—” Richie grabs the handset out of Bill’s grip and blares into the receiver;

“ _PROMCOMING!”_

“Are you having a prom in Portland?” Mike asks at a much more considerate volume. _You are_ actually _fucking unbearable,_ Stan snaps at Richie in the background, rubbing at his own ears to check if he’s gone deaf or if he’s actually bleeding.

“Prom in… prom? Yeah, yeah we- yeah, there’s a prom here. We have prom. It’s in the spring, though. But this November we have Sadie’s,” she’s still trying to contain sharp and shaky breaths of laughter. Bill prefers her stumbling over her words this way than how she had been earlier.

“Are you going?” Eddie asks, a crestfallen tinge that he hopes persuades her against the lure of Portland proms, which he’s certain are a thousand times better than anything Derry has ever hosted.

“I don’t know. No? Probably not. Should I?” It works.

They all howl a loud _NO_ in unison and her hearty laugh is back. _Crazy, crazy kids._

“Am I really being invited to prom by six boys all at once? How scandalous.”

“Actually, four boys. Stan’s got himself a high school sweetheart and he’s _super_ horny now. Like, _all the time,_ I’m talking—” Richie cuts himself off with a titter when he’s shoved hard by Stan (Bev is giggling too), and the phone in his hand is snatched and held away by him. Richie leans over, “ _andI’mtakingEddie’smomofcourse!”_

“You’re so disgusting, no you’re not,” Eddie crawls over him and shoves him down into the couch, trapping and silencing the snickering mass with his whole body as he tries to get closer to the receiver to hear Bev.

“I see nothing’s changed since we last saw each other,” her voice is all smiles.

“P-pretty much,” Bill laughs.

“Well, I’m in, obviously. I’ll get my aunt to drive me. We can all go stag— Stan, you too. Anyone crazy enough to date a Loser is stuck with the rest of us. That’s the rule.” Stan affirms with an amused _yessir_. “When is it?”

And it was that easy. It takes a moment for any of them to find their voices, so Stan provides a _5th November_ and they can hear her writing. Her scribbling takes a while, clearly writing more than just a date. Bill understands. He wonders if she’s tried that before and somehow still forgot. He hopes she doesn’t forget this time. 

Bill is suddenly painfully aware of the cost of this call, and Bev shyly asks to speak to him privately before they hang up. While they do, Richie leans out from under Eddie and over Stan’s lap to pinch at Ben’s cheeks, pouting at him and making blubbering noises in the sympathetic hopes of making him laugh. It’d be a harsh and unpleasant thing if they weren’t close friends, but they were, and he smiles exasperatedly with furrowed brows and pushed out cheeks as he swats Richie’s hand away.

“You excited, Mikey?” Eddie calls over, his arms and hands resting on Richie’s back and shoulders like he’s a human pillow, while the latter continues to happily lay all over Stan’s lap. Eddie can’t see it, but he’s certain he can sense the lazy tickled pink smile permanent on his spectacled face. Mike, on the other end of the couch, perks up.

“Actually? Yeah. I really am. Beats dancing with a sheep, too,” and flashes his award-winning grin at the group, the kind they have no choice but to turn away from, shielding the overwhelming waves of love that radiate through them all.

“Are _you?”_ Richie says from Stan’s lap - a lucky survivor from the blast radius of Mike’s high-spirited charm - looking over his shoulder at Eddie.

“Me? What the hell? Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You know,” Richie sprawls back down and faces the paused screen with a content smile, arm a make-do pillow tucked under his head. “I think I _just might_ ditch my date and go stag with you losers. _No_ date is worth me missing out on Spaghetti’s lonely bachelor _Safety Dance_.” 

Eddie’s got a determined frown and he pinches his sides once, twice, three, no, four— _five_ times, and Richie squawks each time. When Eddie decides to entirely drape over him once he stops his attack, Richie shifts over Stan’s thighs to - _try to_ \- settle under the tantalizing human blanket. Stan’s using Eddie’s back as an armrest while to his right, Ben is tucked into his side and Mike in Ben’s, Mike’s arm resting across the backrest of the couch, comfortably tucked behind Ben and Stan’s necks.

When Bill finally says goodbye to Bev he stands in front of the lounging Losers, between them and their view of the television, claps his hands once and rubs them together. “Alright, boys?” 

He grins, grabs the remote, then falls backwards onto Ben and Mike’s laps, who become a cacophony of whines and groans and complaints as he repositions himself in between laughter. He nests in the small gap between Mike and the right armrest with his legs half over across Mike and Ben’s laps, half dangling off the side. Unfortunately for Richie, that meant Bill’s socked feet were now right in his face, wiggling tauntingly. 

“Why does this always happen to me,” Richie deadpans, and shoves Bill’s feet away so they rest on the coffee table instead.

“The foot in your mouth had to have come from somewhere,” Stan muses, focused on Marty McFly gearing up on stage with a guitar. They had paused at the perfect time.

They all snort and chuckle in their mess of a semi-dogpile as Richie croaks out a loud, taken aback _Yowza!_

And there’s no movie for Richie. Instead of the contagious riffs of _Johnny B. Goode_ , he’s fine-tuned to the shuffling of the boy settled over him: an arm shifting a centimetre or two across his shoulder, a pause, another couple centimetres upwards, then Eddie’s fingers tingle against his hair near the nape of his neck. It’s a pleasant distraction, one that comes about from their particular brand of unspoken permission. It’s just lounging, the mantra goes. They’re just lounging, it’s _fine_. But he knows he isn’t paying the same kind of mind to Stan’s tapping fingers, or Ben’s knee swaying into Stan’s by Richie’s head, or Bill drumming mindlessly on his thighs with a hand to the beat, or Mike’s near-silent humming. It took actual effort to quiet down the rise and fall of Eddie’s breathing, the soundproofed pulse of his heart somewhere against his middle back muffled by soft t-shirts, to even take notice of anything the other boys were doing. 

He’s _almost_ mad at just how comfortable he is. The deep innate bubbling desire to obnoxiously air guitar the entirety of _Johnny B. Goode_ alongside Marty McFly in front of the television while the Losers boo him like he always, _always_ does, is snatched away by bliss. _Almost_ mad. He smiles as he thinks of the others’ relief for his stillness.

* * *

Richie wakes up from a thirty-minute nap that felt like thirty hours when the credits roll and Stan is pushing him off. His back feels colder than he remembers. They’re all slowly packing up around him, and he wants to help, but, _no_ , no he doesn’t. With legs outstretched, his head falls onto the backrest. Despite the bullshit he relays to the Losers, in that moment, he feels like what he imagines being high feels like.

“ _Look atchyou... my leetle housewives... my darlink maidens,_ ” he gushes like an old babushka in an awfully unpracticed thick Russian accent. His eyes are half-lidded from sleep and there’s a dopey crooked smile that breaks out.

Eddie raises his head from where he’s tying his shoelaces and his face twists in all sorts of ways. It’s a face journey Richie will never tire from watching.

“Okay, Gorbachev,” Bill throws a particularly flat couch pillow at Richie then returns to collecting empty plates and cups. “Why don’t you contribute to your community and p-put the cushions away. Puh-puff them out, ss-so Mom doesn’t kill me.”

Richie falls onto his side with his long arms up above his head stretched as far as they can go, groaning long and loud, yet in his head, he smiles. Bill’s stutter is practically gone thanks to his therapy, though he does still struggle with P’s and S’. Richie barely even notices anymore, but he damns the English language for having so many words with the accursed letters anyway and celebrates the quiet mental victories along with Bill, something he’d never admit. Eddie’s palm then smacks hard against where his side meets his belly.

“Hurry up, dick. I have to be home soon or _my_ mom will _literally_ kill me.”

“ _Dick?_ ” Richie scrunches his face so tightly his vision is almost all-black. 

“Yeah. Dick. That’s your name.” Eddie spots a sweet wrapper on the carpet that’s half-hidden under the sofa.

“That’s cute,” Richie finds the strength to push himself up off the couch and starts fluffing up the flat and sturdy pillows. “You’re real cute, Spaghedward.”

He’s thrown the wrapper away. “Yuck, I think that’s your worst one yet, Sputnik.”

“Yet!” Richie lights up and raises a finger. “Don’t move, I’m going to fluff these against you,” and he readies a pillow for a swing in Eddie’s direction who instantly sprints across the room to hide behind Bill, spewing wonderfully colorful obscenities all the way.

“Are you lovebirds done?” Stan is halfway out through the open front door. “We’re leaving. See you tomorrow. Don’t kill each other,” he nods goodbye towards the trio still inside. “Or _do_ ,” and his lips quirk into a fondly smug smile as he turns to leave. Ben follows him out, mouthing _don’t_ , with a grin and a bashful wave goodbye. 

“See you, Big Bill,” Mike salutes and smiles that _Honey Sweet Hanlon Smile_. “Kaspbrak. Trashmouth.” He gives the pair a look - the kind a parent gives to a child with cookie crumbs around their mouth as they claim to not have eaten any. Pointed, humored, and knowing.

Richie looks at Eddie. “ _Lovebirds?_ ”

“I _know_ ,” he agrees, shared confusion and bewilderment between them. “He’s never used _that_ before. It’s always _losers_ , or _assholes_ , _idiots_ , _morons_...” Eddie is counting the terms off on his fingers.

Richie nods, as though he’s come to a conclusion.

“Patty.”

Eddie snaps his fingers in eureka. “Patty,” he repeats.

“Can you two idiots get out of my house?”

No stutter. Richie slides his coat on then the two of them are outside.

“We can’t let her get away with this,” Eddie shakes his head with lips pulled in and furrowed brows. “‘ _Lovebirds.’_ Stanley wouldn’t dare. I can hear him now, _uhhh, I’m Stan, and you two are nowhere near deserving of the respect that I have for the majestic parrot._ ”

“I think we need to have a few words with a certain Patricia Blum. I mean, our _idiot dignity_ , our _loser renown_ , our _moron poise_ ,” Eddie is nodding his head feverishly as Richie prattles on. “ _Eddie,_ our very _essence_ is in _jeopardy!_ ” 

Richie looks absolutely distraught, dramatically horrified with wide eyes and a wobbling downturned mouth; Eddie can’t hold his own aghast expression for much longer and the pair of them explode into fits of laughter. It’s almost seven and the sky is bruised dark purple.

“Forget _us_ , she’s making _Stan_ soft. He’s got love on the brain. It’s sickening.”

“Actually, I think she’s making Stan anything _but_ soft,” Richie winks and shoots him a pair of finger guns, and Eddie _wants_ to groan but the bark of a laugh escapes him before he can contain it.

They’re strolling on the road instead of the sidewalk, as always with no need to worry about traffic or oncoming cars, and Eddie is only a _little_ peeved that he walked to Bill’s instead of biking there. He knows he’s going to be home late. _Six-thirty at the latest, Eddie_ , his mother had warned. _Six-thirty on the dot, Eddie_. He slows down his pace. _On purpose,_ he thinks. He considers dropping Richie off at his house first, or _something_ , just to take even longer to get home. He’s already late, anyway. It makes sense in his head. _On purpose._

“So, real talk,” Richie says suddenly, and Eddie chokes on his spit. 

“‘ _Real talk’?_ The hell is _that?_ ”

“I’m trying out new phrases. Expanding my vocabulary. Patty’s giving me a private one-on-one,” he winks. “Don’t tell Stan.”

“I am so telling Stan. I am _so_ telling Stan.”

“ _Love_ a man you can trust your deepest darkest secrets with. A man you can trust with your _life_ ,” Richie sighs dramatically, hand over his chest. “Very hard to come by these days... but I’m _sure_ I have _nothing_ to fear with _you_.”

“ _Yeah, yeah,_ okay.” Eddie is warm. “What is it?”

“Spill it, ladykiller. Who’re you taking to prom?” Richie nudges him in the shoulder.

Eddie raises a brow at him. “I’m… going stag. You know I am.”

“Hmm…” 

“ _Hmm—_ what’s _hmmm?_ Don’t _hmmm_ me.”

“ _I don’t kno-ow…_ ” Richie sing-songs.

“What the hell? I’m serious.”

“I bet there’s totally someone you want to take.”

“Yeah, well, bet away then, because I’m about to get slightly richer.”

“What if a girl asked you? Either _to_ the dance or _at_ the dance, it doesn’t matter.”

“Why do you care? What does it matter? You said it yourself, it doesn’t matter.”

“Hmm…”

Eddie watches him while they walk, the directions home second nature to them so neither really need to pay attention. Eddie’s full focus is on Richie, and his silent thanks is for the ease of it instead of what, perhaps, lies beneath that ease. He furrows, brows deeply knit together. Staring, observing, searching. He knows there’s an answer in that confusing face somewhere - but to what question?

“Like what you see?” Richie grins. Eddie scoffs.

They’re both watching the pavement now. 

“I miss Bev,” Richie mumbles. Kicks a rock.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Me too.”

They all do. But Eddie doesn't miss the wistfully sombre lilt in Richie's voice as he says it. He took to her almost as quickly and easily as he did Eddie back in the first grade. And _maybe_ his gut twists a little and _maybe_ he thinks he can process why but— he scuffs his shoes on the pavement and remembers he’s in Derry. He also remembers that Richie Tozier is not a quiet guy, which he very much was being right now. He’d like to say they’re walking in comfortable silence, but there’s too much _thinking_ going on. He wonders what Richie is thinking about. 

Richie throws an arm around Eddie’s shoulders.

“Eds - _prom, marry, kill_. Me,” and he takes a moment to think about the other two options. Almost like he doesn’t want them there. “Stan… _Bill._ Shoot.”

“Well obviously I take the opportunity to finally kill _you_ ,” comes the immediate and matter-of-fact response.

“ _Obviously,_ ” Richie nods sagely.

“Then… fuck.”

“Hey man, this is _prom_ , marry, kill, not the other one.” A pause. “ _Unless_ …”

“Shut up.” 

He does. 

“You know, I’m not gonna lie...” He does. He _has_. “Post-Patty Stanley… _very_ interesting. I think I would take a weird, romantic, honeymoon-phase Stan to prom. I’d have to be Patty, though, to get the full experience. Unless in this universe, he’s madly in love with _me_.”

“ _Everyone’s_ madly in love with you in this universe.”

“Okay?” Eddie huffs out a laugh, brows knit. “And that means…?”

“Man…” Richie groans and drops his arm from around Eddie, expertly ignoring the question. If changing subjects was a sport, he’d be an Olympic gold-medal champion. “You’re really gonna marry _Bill?”_

“Well, what the fuck would _you_ do?”

“Easy. Marry myself, prom with Stan the man, kill Bill- hell, it even rhymes—”

“Okay, no, stop. Not you. Between _me_ , Stan and Bill.”

“Don’t you think Ben and Mike and Bev are feeling a little lonely?” 

Eddie throws him an exasperated look. Richie catches it with fervency. He swallows.

“It’d be the same, then.”

Eddie pulls in his lips and chews at the bottom one, mouth a thin line. He doesn’t even notice that they’ve stopped walking. They’re thinking again. Overthinking.

“Well,” Eddie clears his throat. “Now _I’m_ the one who’s the asshole. Here’s you saying you’d _marry me_ and I killed you _immediately_. _Zero_ hesitation.”

“Sounds about right, though.” 

“Maybe.”

“Maybe.” 

Richie’s fists are balled into the pockets of his jacket. They’re outside Eddie’s house. Eddie kind of hates it, but he also kind of loves it. _It_ not being the house. _It_ being the fact that Richie’s here with him. The fact that he always somehow ends up here with him. Always somehow ends up _anywhere_ with him. They sit on the curb of the sidewalk across the street from Eddie’s house, some kind of telepathic agreement between them. Eddie didn’t want to walk in. Richie didn’t want to leave. _On purpose,_ they thought. It made sense. The living room lights are on.

Eddie breaks the silence. “Prom, marry, kill - Ben, Bev, Mike.”

“Marry Bev. Coolest long-term roommate on earth. Take Mikey to Prom, that dude is a _gentleman_. And… sorry Ben, but I gotta kill you. If I have to hear one more disgustingly romantic haiku I _just_ might go insane.”

“You’re already insane,” Eddie huffs.

“Yeah. Maybe.” Another pause. “Your turn.”

“Okay…” Eddie rubs his hands together to warm them. It’s past seven now. He groans. “This one sucks. I don’t want to kill any of them.”

“Prom, marry, fuck?” Richie suggests, and Eddie turns to snap at him but he thinks it might be a little better. Maybe. Still gross, though. Richie is grinning at him and he realises he must’ve gotten lost on another face journey again.

“This is lame,” is Eddie’s final answer.

“I’m a little hurt, Eds. You wouldn’t kill any of the others but I’m prime real estate?”

“More like _free_ real estate. You’re an easy choice.”

“Fair enough, I’m gonna just crawl through your window one day and arrive prepared - body bag, elastic gloves, knives, scissors, stethoscope, whatever your murder weapon of choice is, the works. All ready for you to work your killer magic on.”

“ _Stethoscope?”_

“I dunno! Dr K is a very complex and multifaceted murderous killer. Maybe he gets off to his victims’ beating hearts, needs to listen to them while he’s carving away. Or maybe he’s got a choking kink?”

“You’re so not funny.”

“Anyway, _hello_ , you’re missing the part where I’m _giving you_ me. Appreciate my loving gift, man. You have my blessing to go full _Operation_ on my ass. All raw, all-natural, no anaesthesia.”

“What the hell are you talking about? Why would I- what is wrong with you? Jesus, maybe you _do_ need an operation. I think there’s actually something wrong with you.”

Richie stares, then swallows, then smiles. “Do you really think there’s something wrong with me, Dr K?”

And Eddie falters, because it’s such a terribly meek and tentative inquiry. Terrible in how Richie is fiddling with his thumbs. Terrible in how sick it makes him feel. He says it in a way that requires a real, genuine answer. One that Eddie doesn’t know if he can give or even has. Fifteen-year-old Richie is a terrible and terrifying thing sometimes. A Richie whose jokes do not seem to meet halfway with his own as much as they usually to. A Richie that thinks. A lot. He thinks so much more than he actually needs to. A Richie that doesn’t seem as excited about this stupid school dance anymore. A Richie that doesn’t go to the arcade anymore. A Richie that, for what feels like the first time, seems scared to be near Eddie, because he’s fifteen, and there are consequences now that come pre-packaged with being fifteen. The blissfully blind veil of innocence is torn and he’s all raw, all-natural, fully exposed, with no anaesthesia. 

“If you haven’t noticed already, smartass, I think there’s something wrong with just about anything and everything.”

Richie blows air out of his nose and smiles. It’s empty. “This is lame.”

Eddie decides that he hates fifteen-year-old Richie.

“Yeah, it is. This _is_ lame. So can you let me get inside already and get my mom’s bullshit over and done with? Because I’m fucking freezing. So I’m probably going to get sick. And I’m also probably going to get grounded, so I expect to see you at my window then so I don’t die of boredom, and on the fifth, you’re going to the dance with me. _And—_ and Bill. Me, and Bill and Stan and Bev and Mike and Ben. _Us._ With us. And we’re probably going to end up ditching anyway, and maybe we’ll do karaoke until one in the fucking morning again, and I _know_ I don’t really have asthma so I don’t want to hear it but I _really fucking want a God damned inhaler right now._ ”

“You don’t need it,” Richie’s voice is barely a whisper, and it’s worse. It’s worse than a silent Richie, worse than an overthinking Richie, worse than a distant and scared and confusing Richie.

Eddie’s breathing is rough. He knows. He knows Richie is right. He doesn’t need it. He just _wants_ it. Something inside him squirms at that. Something about dependency, something about addiction, something about irony. Eddie thinks of all the times he’d insist that moments like this, alone with Richie, where they’re honest and real with each other and not putting on performative airs, were his favorite. Right now he hates it. Despises it, even. Because what does a twelve-year-old need to be honest about? Nothing, so he likes it then. What does a nine-year-old need to be real about? Nothing, so he likes it then. A fifteen-year-old’s honesty suffocates him, and he’s dizzy. Asthma attack? Panic attack? Stroke?

“Eddie, I…” Richie tries to look at him. He can’t. The road is good enough. “I, kind of, _really_ don’t want to go home.”

“Well,” Eddie laughs and it comes out strained. “Then you’re dumber than I thought. You’re gonna freeze out here.”

Richie opens his mouth then closes it. He settles for a confused grin.

“ _Jesus,_ Richie, she’ll never let you in, she never does, you know that, and she’ll be on my case enough for tonight. If she sniffs you out as well, that’s it. Say your goodbyes now because- because you’re never going to see me again,” he’s talking with his hands, feverish and desperate. 

“I hate your mom, man.”

“I know.”

A second. Another, another, another. One more.

“She can forget about going to prom with me, then. We’re officially over.”

Eddie stares, still, and silent, then his head is slowly shaking left to right in suspended disbelief. Richie gives him a sheepish little glance with a sheepish little smile. And they break. They break and they burst and they laugh and Eddie, ever so fondly frustrated, mimes wringing Richie’s neck, who lolls a tongue out and crosses his eyes to humor him. Eddie gets up then and pulls Richie up when he makes grabby hands at him from the curb.

“Are we… good?” Richie asks, brushing imaginary dust off his jeans that isn’t there. “We’re okay, right?”

“Richie, we… we’re _more_ than fucking okay. We’re the _best,_ ” and Eddie prods him in the chest with his index as he says it.

Richie smiles a little dumbly. Embarrassed, maybe. But then Eddie grins, and so does he, and it’s finally a _real,_ cheeky, blindingly gross _Textbook Tozier_ grin. 

And Eddie realises he _does_ have a word for it all. An obvious little thing. He hates it, he despises it, and it suffocates him and spins his head relentlessly, just like a fifteen-year-old Richie does. Because it’s - - - -. It’s weird in his head, in his mouth, on his tongue, like poison, even when he hadn’t actually uttered the damn thing. He’s on a roll with the self-realisation that night, as he then realises he suddenly doesn’t even know _how_ to utter it. It’s not for him to say, or feel, or think, or give, he muses. It had always been something fleeting reserved for only his mother. To give it to someone else would be like giving someone a card with nothing written inside. 

There’s a faceless crowd with a revolting leper hidden somewhere inside, wagging fingers and shaking heads in his mind, that remind him it’s not something for him to give to Richie. He wants to, though. Wants to fill every white space in the card with words and chicken-scratch scribbles only decipherable by Richie, just because everyone said he couldn’t, he _shouldn’t_. He wants the word back selfishly for himself, just like he had written it on his cast two years ago. _On purpose._ He wonders how he lost it, how he _forgot_ it. He wants it just like he had wanted his inhaler, except this might be something he may actually _need_. 

Richie on the other hand, ever the overthinker, thinks about Eddie’s little outburst more than he needs to. _You’re going to the dance with me_ , he echoes. _With me, with me_. He thinks about it on the way home. He thinks about it in his sleep. He thinks about it upon waking. He thinks about it while clambering through Eddie’s window, having been grounded for a week. He thinks about it while he waits for Eddie to finish reading a comic page so he can turn it over. He thinks about it during class. He thinks about it during the detention he got for thinking about it during class. He thinks about it during movie nights at the Aladdin, or on the plush new Denbrough couch. He thinks about it until he couldn’t think about it anymore. Until it was too risky to think about. Until he had no choice but to weaponize it and defend himself. To force himself to never think about it ever again.

On a chilly 4th November evening, Beverly arrived in Derry.

* * *

Hormones are a bitch. The Losers pride themselves on the fact that even in change they will remain what they've always been at their core, but to say they have been acting strange and unlike themselves in the past month is an understatement at best. They certainly took notice, but their mouths were kept shut tight under lock and key: an unspoken expectation, a universal rule. No one dared to bring anything up, as though talking about feelings and curiosities had been suddenly outlawed and punished if practised. The slightest of prodding that threatened to break through these new paper-thin walls they’ve put up was enough to make any of them snap. 

The most pent of the bunch was Richie. Their resident joker had developed a newfound irrational sensitivity to just about anything around him and it was completely worrisome to witness. He had gotten into a fight with his locker neighbor and he didn’t have a reason why. It certainly wasn’t because he moved a flyer for prom from his locker door onto Richie’s or anything. He didn’t even have a story made-up to use as a _get-out-of-jail-sooner_ pass for his detentions. He rolled with the punches as he threw them, and by that point, it became obvious he was doing it all _on purpose._ He lucked out with two warnings and no ban from the dance, but the Losers were furious with him. Eddie in particular, which Richie found deliciously ironic.

They are sitting in the canteen at lunch and Richie is picking at the bread of his sandwich, rolling tiny balls out of the chunks he rips off and flicking them about their round table. His mom had packed a lunch for him for the first time in a while and he’s staring at it like eyeballs or human fingers will fall out at any moment. He’s too focused on the possibilities of gory condiments to hear anything that Eddie, Bill, or Stan are barking at him. Richie also hears Mike’s voice in his head, echoing how mad he would be with him if he ditched the dance. Richie wishes he was homeschooled right now, too.

“Oh my God, he’s not even— HEY! Dickhead!” Eddie waves a frantic hand in front of his face. When he doesn’t move or respond he gets a light smack to the back of his head. “Can you listen? Are you insane?” _Listen to me. Look at me._

“It’s just a stupid dance, I don’t get what the big deal is,” are Richie’s first words of the day, muttered under his breath. 

“Yeah, a stupid dance that was _all_ you could talk about for the last, oh, I don’t know, _five months?”_ Stan is using his fork to point at Richie as he speaks. His tupperware box is filled with leftover tahdig. It’s just the rice, too - no meat, no potatoes, no salad, nothing. Richie wants to talk about rice instead of prom. 

“Be-besides, it’s not about the dance. Nn-not really,” Bill looks at him from his lowered glare. 

“The fuck?” Richie drops his arm limp on the table beside his sandwich. “What is that? What is it, Bill? What are you saying?” He’s gesturing at him with a sharp hand. “ _Always_ on my case. _Always_ some fucking problem. Alright, Dr Shrink, give it to me, then - what, you think I have some kind of _c-c-c-complex?_ Is that it?”

“You _obviously_ have a fucking complex, Rich. That’s not really a shock. And maybe _you_ should get off _Bill’s_ case. He’s just talking. We’re all just talking. We’re all just fucking _peachy_.” 

“ _Jeeesus_ , Eds, if you love Bill so much why don’t you _marry_ him.” He’s being unfair, and he knows it. But he’s forcing himself to ride it out per his own harmful demands. He goes back to staring down Bill across the table and hopes they fight and that there are teachers around to see it. If he gets banned from prom, he has an excuse to not go. If he gets kicked out of school, well then maybe that’s for the best.

Ben is picking at the peas on his tray - stark green against stark red. It would be a pleasant flash of color if everything around them wasn’t so hopelessly washed out in dull greys.

“You’re ss- _such_ an asshole, you know?” Bill.

He’d intervene, but he doesn’t really know what to say or do. Ben watches and waits and hopes something can come to him in time.

“Oh, _I’m_ the asshole? I’m not the one picking apart his friends like they’re shitty fucking canteen food on some cheap plastic tray. You’re not special, Denbrough.” Richie.

There’s hurt, though. There’s some real hurt in all of them and Ben senses it, and you don’t necessarily have to be psychic or a trained professional to notice it. 

“I did-didn’t… I’m nn-not—”

“He’s just trying to understand you, idiot.” Stan. “We’re trying to help.”

Ben only knows them for two years, which _is_ long, but somehow it still doesn’t feel long enough. 

“No— _no,_ you— _sit down_ , sit the _fuck_ down.” Eddie gets up as Richie stands, poised, and pushes him back down into his seat by the shoulder. It burns. He shoves it off. Bill is floored. “I can’t believe you just— _seriously?_ ”

Ben wants to help; _needs_ to. How can he help Richie find his verdant earthiness again? How can he help Richie find his red flame again? Ben’s wristwatch quietly beeps under the tussle.

“Hey, guys, look—”

“Richie, w-what…” Bill doesn’t even know what to say. He looks somehow both furious and abysmally worried at the same time.

It’s a look Richie knows all too well, a personal little silent demon that gapes at him like he’s the source of everything wrong in the world. The only look that was available to him when he couldn’t find a pair of eyes that could really, _truly_ look at him in confidence. He knows it’s not Bill, not really. Knows that he doesn’t stare at him in that way. Bill’s blues are waves that crush and drown him, cooling and imparting, but these are no longer Bill’s eyes - they’re his own, staring right back at him. Richie flinches briefly at the sight of it, but Richie must, he _must_ dramatize and sabotage everything because every ounce of him is demanding it.

Stan is just observing - eating and watching the scene unfold with critical eyes that have that unusually serious glint in them. It’s Stan’s body language way of saying that this is a drama he’s witnessed many times before, but there’s something, just _something_ , not quite right - something strange and crucial and harrowing behind the motives. Something that they as a group don’t particularly have any place in interfering with. 

“ _Guys_ —”

“Are you serious right now?” Eddie, ever the eager cat following curiosity’s pull into the desperate need to find an answer and solution to any problem. “Are you really going to do this? You promised me, you fucking promised. You promised you wouldn’t do anything. Also - no, you’re right, _fuck the dance_ \- are you trying to sabotage _yourself_ _?_ Trying to- to get yourself _expelled_ or something? What then, you’re gonna be stuck here in this shitty town with no plans or future and- and no, no _anything?_ If you don’t want to go then just don’t go. Easy. Simple. But don’t you _dare_ go and get yourself _fucking kicked out for it._ All because you didn’t want to go to fucking _prom._ Or because you’re going through- through _something_ that none of us know about because everything that comes out of your mouth has to be a God damn joke or, or—”

“ _GUYS!”_ They all turn to Ben. He’s already on his feet with his backpack on and holding his barely empty tray. It seems none of them are having any success with their appetites lately. “I’m sorry, but I have to go. I promised to help at the library here. I don’t want to be late.” He hates how it sounds as he says it, sinking quieter and quieter as he explains himself. Richie swallows and it’s somehow louder than the cafeteria itself.

They nod at him like he hadn’t been rude at all, like he doesn’t need to ask them for permission to leave, like they hadn’t been arguing at all and everything that had just transpired was nothing more than a bad fever dream, like he’s still part of the group and one of their best friends and everything’s okay. Ben wants to feel relieved about that, happy, even, but there’s still that tiny tug that says he could’ve done more to be involved.

“Actually, you know what- Benjamin, you think they’ll turn down an extra pair of hands down there?”

“The school library is almost always empty, Richie,” he turns around on the spot to face the table again, bright red tray still in hand. “Two hands are one thing. Four hands?” He grins. “That’s a miracle.”

Richie claps. “Dying of boredom in a library for the rest of lunch it is!”

While Ben is spooning out the leftover peas from his tray into the bin, Richie doesn’t wait for him to finish to toss the sandwich he hadn’t taken a single bite out of over his tray. Back at the table, the remaining trio sit in silence and pick at their food in unison just as Richie did, like he’s still there, existing through them. 

Bill rubs at the scar on his palm, then clenches his fist. Eddie is still breathing pretty heavily, nose flaring, brows knit tightly together, lips pulled in and downturned into a pouting frown, and it would look pretty comical if it were not for the current circumstances. It’s the kind of look that would turn Richie into a bubbling ball of glee with a whole new unlimited supply of teasing jokes and commentary. _What a pouty baby!_ _Put this face on a can of peaches!_ Richie would pinch his cheeks and cackle- _cackle!_ The audacity!

He misses him already.

“Eddie,” he looks up and Stan is staring at him. “Unclench,” he says, and Bill blows air out of his nose. Very big of Stan to try and alleviate the energy with humor. 

Eddie’s pouty mouth is positively wobbling now, so he grabs his flatbread sandwich and takes the largest possible bite he can to keep his mouth busy for the next couple of minutes.

“What do you think is going on with- with him?”

Bill and Stan lock onto Eddie, who shoots them a taunting head shake as a challenge - _the hell are you looking at_ me _for? How am I supposed to know?_ He chews slowly to avoid having to speak.

Stan exhales deflatedly. “I better leave some of this for him,” he gazes at the quarter-full box of crisp rice he knows Richie loves, leftover or not. 

If he knew Richie was going to throw his entire sandwich out like a fool, he’d have left him the entire box. He sets himself a personal reminder to leave three minutes before the bell so he can catch Richie on the way to class and watch him scarf it down at inhuman speeds and quantities. He’d have that embarrassed expression he always has after a spat, fiddle with his glasses then take Stan into a bone-crushing hug he’d return just as intensely. So long as Richie doesn’t avoid him or skip class, he’s looking forward to it.

“Trouble in paradise, you think?” Stan suggests to Bill, and even Eddie’s full mouth couldn’t hold in the noise that escaped him. _Hah!_ he wanted, but only a _hmph!_ came out.

“Yeah right,” Bill finds his appetite and dives into the food on his tray again. “Well,” he pauses with a mouthful of mashed potatoes. “Mm. You fink maybe,” he twirls his fork in the air like he’s working out a mental calculation, then swallows. “He had a d-duh-date… right?”

“He did?” Stan wipes his fork clean with a napkin - it’s a compact cutlery set with clear grips and the box that holds it all is a marine blue. It was so very Stan-like it was borderline annoying. 

_He did?_ Eddie also asks, with his furrowed brows and confused eyes, because his mouth is still chewing. On purpose.

Bill shrugs. “Home- homecoming is obviously the puh-problem, so...” 

The Losers had noticed Bill prefers ‘homecoming’ to ‘prom’, or ‘ _promcoming’_. It’s an endearing little pride of his, taking ownership and control over his speech and words in his own little way. P has been his most difficult phonetic lately, and he had been _furious_. He made sure to berate that damned letter with insults and curses he also struggled with, just to rub it in. Like mocking it in excess stutter would somehow belittle it even more. Just like how Bowers’ gang would belittle _him_ in mock-stutter, he does the same to the letters he hates most. He learned a thing or two about making certain things feel small, you see.

 _St-stup-p-pid f-fuh-fuck-fucking p-p-puh-shit-p-p-pee- pees,_ is just _one_ example of some of the colorful things he would spit and scream out on the roads on his way home. Richie certainly had a field day with it - he’d _beg_ to accompany Bill during these stutter tantrums just so he could hear the onslaught of _pee-fuck!_ and _shit-pee!_ and be brought to hysterics and tears every time. He’s a simple guy. A real connoisseur of comedy.

“Just… wish he’d t-tuh-talk. And I mean, _really,_ t- _talk_. To us.” Eddie and Stan agree, the trio of them nodding now, slow and absentmindedly. Like three bobbing head dolls of dogs you’d find sat on top of a car’s dashboard next to a dancing Hula girl. 

_Wow, check out the bobblehead showcase over here. Look at these puppies! I think I’ll take all three of these little bobbing head dogs. Put them right on the dash of my car, I will. Oh! But my_ goodness _, isn’t_ this _little pup a cutie? I shall call you Edsie. Give us a bob, lil Edsie… come on, boy! Bob your head, little puppy!_

Richie’s crooning voice is loud and irritating in Eddie’s mind, and he hates how vividly he can picture and feel Richie’s hand patting down on his head repetitively to try to get him to bob in the same way they had just been doing. Eddie would try pulling his head out from under Richie’s hand, pushing and shoving him away. _Bob your own fucking head. Oh, wait, nevermind, you already do that plenty_ , is what he’d snap back at him, and Richie would falter for just a split second with this humored-yet-scandalised look that never fails to elicit a cheeky little grin from Eddie. _Me-oh-my, this puppy’s got bark_ and _bite!_

Then it becomes a challenge: Richie would switch from light patting to pushing down against Eddie’s skull, who’d be relentlessly pushing back up against his hand in equal amounts of force. Eddie would grip onto Richie’s hand in his hair with both hands, which would then turn into pinching (for sabotage) and interlocking fingers (for a better grip, of course). It would leave Richie an opening. An _easy, easy_ opening for his free hand to tickle and pinch at Eddie’s sides right under his polo, and that would be _that_. Because Eddie would start kicking then and that’s when Richie would let go and slide down a seat or two away from him, completely satisfied, because he had won.

None of that happens, though, because Richie is not there. Eddie finds himself in the middle of a dilemma he has no name for. He scratches at his right forearm to relieve the phantom itch that had crept up on him, but it doesn’t go away. Like it was always there, even before he broke his arm. He starts listing off illnesses and diseases in his head that have an ‘ _endless itching sensation under the skin’_ listed as a symptom. He _knows_ he shouldn’t, that he doesn’t have to, because he’s _fine._ He’s _okay_ and _healthy_ and _normal_. He’s just curious. It’s perfectly normal to be curious. _Just in case. To be safe-_ he pinches his arm once. _No, not to be safe._ _To be aware_. The itch and his mother’s interfering voice leave him alone for now. 

The bite that he’d been slowly chewing and unable to swallow is mush now, and somewhere between his stomach and his throat, an air of decay and rot passes through him, and he blames Richie for it. For patting his head and touching and annoying him when he was just trying to eat a sandwich. He wants to gag, hurl, spit it out, but he just keeps it in. He blows his cheeks out a little so he can taste it less. He decides to be mad at Richie for not being there right now to call him a gerbil or chipmunk or squirrel or something else equally as irritating. He reaches for Stan’s cup of water because he can’t find his own water bottle. 

Stan sighs, a little frustrated, a little knowing, and a little exhausted. He pinches the bridge of his nose.

“He was always going to go stag with us. We… look, we _know_ Richie. He’s a, a _fucking_ idiot,” Bill and Eddie sit up straight - when Stan swears he always means business. “But we’re the highlight of his damn life. So he’s making all this effort to sabotage himself, and us, and everything around him for… for _what?_ He’s an idiot, but he’s… not. Not _this_ much of an idiot, at least.”

Bill and Eddie listen, and what he said, they themselves already knew deep down. But that is the curse of the unascertained and strange - it feeds on unreality and grows. It takes a little reminder of reality ever so often to keep oneself grounded. Eddie had swallowed while Stan spoke, barely noticing, and it’s cathartic in a sense. He feels lighter, like all the pressure and anger and hurt and rot and decay was all balled up together into the bite he took and broke apart with his teeth. It’s always when something is over that one can truly see the simple reality of it. It takes a little bit of bravery, a risk, a leap of faith, or just a little bit of blind foolishness. Sometimes though, a distraction is enough. Eddie did not drink from Stan’s cup.

Stan is right - they _do_ know Richie. And one thing they can all agree on is that despite their pretence of hatred and annoyance with the boy, they would do anything to keep him and everything that comes with him. They come to the slow realisation that Richie really is the glue that holds the Losers together. 

“Let- let’s try again. Differently, this time. He nn-needs us, and, and we need him.” Bill nods to himself with newfound determination. He nods once more in affirmation at the two boys next to him. They nod back. If the way they initially tried to storm the heavily defended fortress that was Richie Tozier only alienated him further, then they had to find a different angle and another way in.

Fifteen-year-old Richie needed a couple of pairs of hands to carry his faux sense of bravery for him for just a little while longer.

It feels silly then - the reality of everything - and snorts and snickers they didn’t even know they were holding start spilling out. When they said the _great teenage American dream_ of dramatic high school life would feel like a cheesy movie sometimes, whoever ‘they’ were, were right.

“Richie’s right,” says Bill. “It _is_ just a st-stupid dance,” and it’s unspoken, but he knows Richie was also right when he insisted it was a huge and significant thing as well. Disguised under the dramatic proclamations about the shallow importance of prom was Richie’s determination in the rebellious act of enjoying the simple pleasures of childhood in a world adamant on taking them away.

“What the hell is going on?” Eddie croaks out. “This sucks. Why are we like this?” 

He’s hopelessly beaming, though. Eyes bright, huge grin, fond disbelief, and a new ball of mush forms somewhere in his chest and stomach that is more than welcome this time. Eddie grabs Stan’s cup again and this time downs the no-longer-needed water all in one quick gulp, earning a miffed _hey!_ from his friend.

* * *

Ben and Richie drop their bags behind the school librarian’s desk. She’s a tired-looking woman: long dark frizzy hair, young, but with heavy bagged eyes behind her cat-eye glasses. She has a smile like melting butter. She reminds Richie of his mom. His stomach growls.

“Hope it’s alright I brought a friend with me to help?” Ben asks, kind, sweet, and polite. Richie _really_ wants to crack an inappropriate joke or pantomime his posh British gentleman character. _Something_.

“ _More_ than alright, more than alright,” she leads them over to a small room with four big cardboard boxes filled to the brim with books. “Sweethearts, I must thank you for the help, you are _lifesavers_ ,” and she peeks back at them over her shoulder as though making sure they were still there.

They don’t need to see her smile to know that it’s always there. They can hear it in her voice, a sweet lilt with every word. What on _earth_ is this lady doing working at a _school?_ In _Derry?! This chick must be a masochist,_ Richie thinks. _Or she’s just new. Good fucking luck, lady. I give you one month tops._

“I’ll add you to the list then,” Richie remarks, hands in his trouser pockets.

“List?”

“List of people’s lives that I’ve saved. It’s quite big. Might have to check if there’s even any room left for you there.”

She chuckles heartily. “A comedian, I see…” Richie likes it a lot, her laugh. More that he was the one who caused it, than the laugh itself. She turns to Ben now with a thumb in Richie’s direction. “He always like this?”

“Oh, absolutely,” he responds in this fake pretence of annoyance that is impossible to achieve by Ben, so instead, he is fondly exasperated at best.

“Well then, again, thank you for this. I just might lose my mind if I miss another lunch for unpacking books.” On top of one of the boxes is a pile of small A6 sized sheets of paper with empty grids on them, two glue sticks, three big stamps and a sticker roll - small squares in color variations of neon blue, orange, green, and pink. “Just stick in a sheet on the first page right after the cover and stamp into the little box at the bottom of the sheet.” She mimes the motions as she explains. “Ben here knows the sticker system, so he can tell you. I’ll be at the front desk if you need me.”

Richie peers after her when she leaves through the room’s entryway and sees her pull out a thermos from her bag. A _thermos_ , not a liquor flask. She unscrews the lid and steam comes out. She inhales it deeply, sighs happily, then moves somewhere where Richie can’t see her anymore. _It’s the little things._

“You okay?” comes Ben’s voice from somewhere next to him.

“Huh? Oh, yeah,” he stares at the table that Ben’s already covered with towers of books and the items they needed. “Right. What the hell do I do, Haystack?”

“Were you not listening?”

“No, no, I was. But I think I just found my date for prom.”

Ben lightly snorts, shaking his head with a smile and reaches for a pile of books to slide over to Richie, then takes a pile for himself. 

“Yeah? You think she’s… _the one?”_ Ben humors him.

“Oh _God_ , Ben. I just realized who you are. You’re _Ben_. I can’t be around you when love and romance and shit is involved,” Richie drops his face into his hands, propped up by elbows on the table. He’s pushing and pulling his cheeks in and out and all over, all a contorted mess for Ben but a massaging relief for Richie. He mumbles through his fingers, “Why did I come here again?”

“You asked!” Ben calls out.

Richie groans, loud, long, and melodramatic. He tries to keep the groan going for as long as he possibly can, and unfortunately for Ben, it’s _quite_ long. By the time it turns into the last remaining notes of breathy exhalation, it’s been almost half a minute. The moment Richie’s throat locks and Adam’s apple rolls to signify his depleted breath, he instantly jumps in to work as though it never happened. He grabs a book, a sheet, and a glue stick, glances over to observe Ben’s process, glances back, spreads a single line of glue at the top of the back of the sheet, presses it down on the first page, plays with it briefly with how it flips up and down while attached, stamps into the little box at the bottom, shuts the front cover and slams it down somewhere to his left.

“Wait,” he slides the book back in front of him. “Explain the sticker business, Benny boy.”

“Right, so— okay, hold on,” he pulls out a pen and starts writing on the stickers. Once he’s done he sticks them onto the table in order. “We sort by last names. If it starts with A to F, put on a blue one. G to L, orange. M to S, green. T to Z and any numbers or symbols are pink. Easy.”

“Easy,” Richie repeats. He pulls off a green square from the roll when he reads the last name, _Moore_. The entire cover is a close up of a Guy Fawkes mask, so naturally, he sticks the little green square right on the thing’s nose. He’s very proud of himself.

“No, wait, no,” Ben laughs. “In the corner. Here,” he points to the top left.

Richie snaps a finger at Ben. “Right-o! I’ll make sure to do that from now on,” and slides the book to his left without fixing the sticker.

“Rich…”

“Oh, _c’mon._ Just one. I gotta leave my mark _somewhere_.” Ben is grinning as he shakes his head, and goes back to his own pile. “You can shake your head all you want, Haystack, but some asshole’s gonna steal this thing and forget about it for many, many years, then one boring, dull, depressing day, they’ll turn on the TV and—” he gasps, palm outstretched in the air. “There he is. Richard Tozier: legend, philanthropist, sex icon—” Ben blows air out of his nose. “And that sad little bastard will have a _religious fucking experience_ upon seeing my _handsome chiseled jaw_ and _princely locks_. And he’ll go _wait a minute… hold on a second… Richard Tozier… could it be? Could it really, truly, be?_

“He’s digging through boxes in his attic now, _agonizingly_ desperate to find that cover with the mask and the green square nose- and he _does._ And he thinks _wow... I think this is better than sex!_ He takes that book, sells it to a museum in Hollywood, this _relic_ of a _legendary man_ , and he becomes a billionaire. And _I_ make his Goddamn day. No, his entire _life._ And that sad little bastard’s name… was none other than Edward Kaspbrak.”

Ben loses it. Somewhere during the dramatic outburst, he became invested. He’s laughing loud with a hand loosely over his mouth, a laugh that reaches all the way up to his eyes, crinkling them almost completely shut. Richie is laughing with him, erratic and bashful. He gives two quick bows with a hand over his chest while the other is a twirling gesture in the air; _thank you, thank you, I’m here all night._

“How would,” Ben huffs another laugh and adds another finished book to his efficient pile of about eight, “how would he even make that connection? Anyone could’ve put that on there.”

“You’re right, _shit_ ,” Richie says, grave all of a sudden. “I need to _sign_ it, of _course!_ God bless your brains, Hanscom.”

“Wh— no! Don’t ruin it!”

Richie’s already snatched Ben’s pen and is signing an _R.T_ on the small green square nose, “This book was _already_ ruined, Ben. It was delivered to a _school library_ in fucking _Derry_. This thing was doomed from the _start_ , my man.” He flips open the front cover and starts writing near the top. 

> _This book has had the honor and pleasure of being manhandled by one Richard Tozier. If you are reading this in the year 2010, then you must already know who I am. This relic is worth a goldmine in these times. Go forth, my child. You know what you must do._

Ben leans in close to read it. “Are you an ancient sorcerer in the future or something?”

“Dude, _maybe_.” He stops to imagine it. “I think I better pick up magic tricks as a hobby now.”

“ _I_ think that might be Stan’s limit. You pull out a coin from behind his ear and he just might kill you.”

“That’s showbiz, baby!” he sings with a shrug, and they laugh.

They laugh, and they work, and they talk and laugh again until there are about ten minutes left of lunch break. They’ve managed to sort about half of one box and Ben feels a little ashamed about it, wishing he’d done his usual quota of two full boxes instead of goofing off. But it’s not something that’s actually important, he has to remind himself, and it’s easy to do so when Richie is right next to him joking and grinning like the bright blinding beacon he always is.

“You do realise you’ve signed yourself a one-way ticket to detention for vandalising that book and signing it with your name, right?”

“A small price to pay for the good of all future Eddie-kind.”

“Speaking of… Rich, um… do you want to talk?”

And he regrets it immediately. It’s a flash, so fast anyone would have missed it, but Ben catches the flinch in his expression before it’s covered up with another smile. A forced one.

“About what?” he leans back in his chair, arms behind his head, the very image of cool and chilled out, relaxed lounging. Pretending like he doesn’t know. Always pretending.

“I don’t know… the fight… prom… everything... are you okay?”

Richie fixes him a look. An interviewer’s critical gaze. He’s searching with the intention of uncovering _something_ hiding away in Ben, but he can’t find what he’s looking for. Richie hasn’t come to a conclusion yet on whether that’s a good or bad thing. He taps his fingers on the table to music that isn’t playing, a nonchalant disguise over the intense and overwhelming mental game of chess in his mind. 

“I don’t like you, Ben Hanscom,” he says simply. It’s a direct smack to the face for Ben.

“Um,” his nerves skyrocket, picking at the sticker on his finger and folding it with his thumb, needing it more than the book in front of him did. “I’m… I’m sorry?”

“I don’t like you, Ben Hanscom,” Richie jabs a pointed finger in his direction, “because for some reason I just can’t lie to you.”

Ben’s pretty sure he just went through all five stages of grief in world record time.

“ _Aaand_ unclench,” Richie’s grin is small and crooked. He drops his hand limply over his lap.

“Holy _shit,_ Rich, you _can’t_ do stuff like that to me, I really thought…” Ben looks like he’s about to melt in the chair with how much he deflated.

“What can I say, I’m an excellent actor.”

Ben is an observant guy. Always has been, and always will be. You have to be when you’re a kid like Ben - a kid with a bright red target on his back at all times, visible to _everyone_. There’s fresh meat and easy prey, and then there’s someone like Ben who has been deemed lesser. Fresher. _Easier_. Ben didn’t get to simply _be_ for a long time. He couldn’t exist when he had to _survive_. So Ben is an observer - aware, critical, calculating. But what Ben prides himself on more than anything else is his unwavering and ever understanding empathy. Shame, pain, and torment were tough and relentless beasts, and they were hard, but Ben loved, and he loved _harder_. Ben _knows_ demons, and he sees them all over Richie. 

Richie is a painting. A loud and colorful one where the brush strokes seem lost, like the painter didn’t know how to use them effectively, leaving them purposeless. He’s a painting that sprouted from impulsivity, a painting born of freedom of expression and no rules, no strings attached. It’s orange - Richie is orange. Bright, blaring, _noisy_. In a certain light, he is yellow, in others he’s brown. A heavily textured impasto: aimless and violent strokes with thick and heavy amounts of garish orange paint that is raised out of the canvas itself, reaching out, attempting to escape. A painting you cannot _just_ look at but a painting you must _experience._ A painting you must brush a hand across to feel every solid bump and bubble, every high and every low. Richie is a painting that desperately does not want to be a painting. 

So yes, Richie _is_ an excellent actor. So excellent that he managed to fool the one person he never should have: himself.

“What’s going on, Richie?” It’s a question that carries a hundred others with it, and he can see Richie’s eyes parrying them all. “Do you not want to go to prom?”

“It’s not that I _don’t_ want to go. I guess I just don’t see the point if it won’t be… like… y’know, _perfect_. No offence. I love you assholes, but I hang out with you guys every day. It’d just be like any other day, except we’re all dressed for church, and instead of prayer we’re doing the Roger Rabbit.”

“Sounds pretty perfect to me.”

Richie snorts. “Yeah, I guess that does sound kinda fucking special,” he sighs. “Besides, it doesn’t matter, ‘cuz I’m going. Eds will kill me, or worse, _hate me_ if I don’t.”

“Is that what you promised?”

“Huh?”

“Eddie, he- he said something… something about you promising. To not do anything.”

_“What the hell did you do?” Eddie’s immediately reaching for the tissues in his pack._

_“Why is it always_ me _? Maybe it was someone else who did something. Ever think about that?”_

_“Richie, your mom has been called in, like, four times in the last week alone.” Eddie dabs at the drip of blood reaching Richie’s top lip. “Why didn’t you go to the nurse?… so fucking disgusting, it’s all dried up.”_

_“I didn’t get hit, I swear! So it’s not like anything’s broken… shit just started pouring out. And I_ did _go to a nurse. Came to you, didn’t I? There’s only one nurse in this school that’s worth my time.”_

_“Yeah, yeah,” Eddie presses the tissue forcefully against Richie’s nose, earning a scandalized yelp. “I can’t believe you just sat there for two periods bleeding all over the place just so you could fucking waste my time with this. Did you eat breakfast?”_

_“Yeah…”_

_Eddie’s stare is pointed and challenging._

_“Two spoons of peanut butter.”_

_“Jesus Christ.”_

_“Hey, it’s, like, protein, or whatever. Look, I slept in, okay? Didn’t have time.”_

_“How long did you sleep?” Eddie’s index and thumb pinch the soft part of Richie’s nose just below the bridge and he holds it there._

_“Uhhh—” he cuts himself off with a humored huff at his nasally tone. “Let’s see, I, uh… I mean… you know.”_

_“Great,” Eddie rubs at his temples with his free hand. “You know what? Whatever. Whatever, I don’t care. I don’t fucking care, so just...”_

_Eddie peeks over and is met with earnest eyes peeking right back, slightly obscured by the hand still pinching Richie’s nose. He sighs, grabs a new tissue from his pack instead of the one he shoved into Richie’s hands that was still perfectly fine to re-use despite the single blotch of blood, and dabs at a stray red smear dusting the side of a nostril that he missed earlier._

_“No, that’s not true. I do. Sorry.”_

_“Awwh, what? What’s that? You care? You care about me? About lil old me? What?”_

_“Don’t make it weird, dude,” he lets go of Richie’s nose and observes to see if there’s any more flow. “You’d die if I didn’t. Even though you never fucking listen to me, I’ll probably keep reminding you to get at least eight hours of sleep for the rest of my damn life.”_

_“Eight hours is for suckers,” and irony plants its sweet kiss when he immediately gets locked into a heavy yawn._

_“At least suckers aren’t spontaneously bleeding every other day and being weird and starting pissy little fights the rest. I told you, on the fifth, I better fucking see you there. So don’t be stupid.”_

_“I dunno if I wanna go, Eds,” he rubs at his eye._

_The bleeding seems to have stopped. Eddie dabs at a clean spot near Richie’s top lip anyway._

_“Then just don’t go. I don’t know why you’re trying to get kicked out over it.” Eddie’s expression turns grave. “Don’t do that. Promise you won’t do anything. Seriously, Richie, don’t leave me in this shithole.”_

_“I’m not… leaving you— what? Why would that… I’d still be in Derry, dude, I don’t—”_

_“As if your parents would let you just_ not go to school _. You’d be out of town first-fucking-thing to attend the next school over, and then what? I’d… can you maybe not drop out until after we graduate?”_

_“Eddie, I’m not—” he huffs a laugh. “I’m not dropping out, or- or getting kicked out.”_

_“Yeah, well, I really can’t fucking tell lately. Promise.”_

_Richie smacks both hands on either side of Eddie’s cheeks. An affirming double-pat._

_“I promise, Spaghetti Man.”_

_“Then I’m not going to the dance either.”_

_“What? No, you have to go.”_

_“Okay, then_ you _have to go.”_

_“Jeez, you’re so annoying…”_

_Eddie scoffs. “Oh,_ I’m _annoying?”_

_“Yeah. Super annoying. Why won’t you go if I don’t?”_

_“Because… because I know you’re going. I’m calling your bluff.”_

_“And the real reason?”_

_“Shut the fuck up, Richie.”_

_Richie tosses a crumpled ball of bloody tissues at him, to which Eddie, horrified, instantly drags him off the table he was perched on and captures his head in a lock at his stumble._

_“Asshole. Say you’ll promise you’ll go, Richie. Say it.”_

_“I’ll go! I’ll go! I promise! I promise I’ll go!” he yelps in between cracks of laughter, clutching at Eddie’s vice-grip arm. “Is this how you ask all your dates to prom?!”_

_Stan opens the door, halts at the display before him, “You know, I_ was _going to tell you someone’s coming, but I’ll just let you get in trouble instead,” and closes the door. Richie and Eddie instantly scramble into a messy sprint out of the empty classroom._

“Rich?”

“Huh— yeah, yeah, sure. Look, hey, what the hell? Bev is… Bev’s coming back. To Derry. Why aren’t we talking about that? Can we talk about that? Yeah, let’s talk about that,” he answers himself before Ben could. 

Richie relishes in the flush in Ben’s cheeks. He can latch onto that. Anything to give his mouth something else to rattle on about. Anything to take away the attention off his own flushed cheeks.

“You... _are_ going to ask her, right? You’ve _got_ to, dude.”

“I don’t… really…” a shaky laugh escapes him. Ben crumples to his nerves just like that. “I mean… she’s… and I— I’m… I mean… and, _y'know_ …”

Richie is nodding. “You’re right. I _do_ know. I got _all_ of that.” He didn’t.

Ben groans and rubs at his temples, leaning forward in his seat to stare at the ugly green carpet between his legs. This was supposed to be about Richie.

“I just… Bill probably already asked her anyway. Right?” he peeks up at Richie, who has no idea what the hell he’s talking about. “They’re always on the phone together. Alone. And- and remember when we invited her? She wanted to talk to him before we hung up. In private. So…”

“ _Man_ , that Bill is such a homewrecker,” Richie complains to himself, then a bark of a laugh escapes him. “And yet! We’re all so fucking in love with the jackass. What gives?”

Ben laughs, “It’s Bill’s world. We’re all just living in it.”

“Hah! Ain’t _that_ the truth!” Richie raises a hand and Ben high-fives him. 

They settle back into their chairs and Richie has sunk so low into his he’s practically not sitting in it anymore. He sighs, long and heavy, and somehow deflates even more. 

“She’d be stupid not to go with you though,” Richie thinks aloud. “If she goes with Bill I think I’ll never speak to her again.”

“Yeah you will,” Ben grins.

Richie chews on the flesh inside his mouth for a second, then scrunches his face and smirks. “Yeah, you’re right. I will. I mean, there has to be _some_ balance in this group. I _need_ someone cool, _like me_ , to talk to because I _may_ go crazy around the rest of you boring losers.”

“Says the Loser who spent almost his entire lunch break today volunteering at the school library.”

“Oh God, oh _God_ ,” Richie looks horrified. He clutches at his face with both hands. “It’s already happening. Oh _God,_ I’m going _stag_ to prom with a bunch of nerds. Oh dear God,” he grabs and grips at his chest as though he’s dying from a heart attack. “Ben. I need a doctor.”

“We need to get you to Dr K.”

“ _God_ , yes. I’ve heard he’s the _best_. Has magic little hands. Can cure anything. He’s solved cancer. He’s solved AIDS. World hunger, too. Hell, even the _poison ivy epidemic_. If _anyone_ can cure the virgin out of me, it can _only_ be him.”

“He’ll… cure your virginity? How will he do that?”

Richie’s mouth is a thin line.

“Okay, so, on second thought,” a huff of forced humored air, “Nevermind. Leave me here to die, Ben. If I die here in this library, they’ll never find my body. It’s better this way.”

Ben raises a brow. “Wait, what?”

“ _Huh? What?”_ Richie snaps fingers in his face. “Just a joke. Keep up, Haystack.”

Richie doesn’t sputter. Especially not after things that come out of his own mouth. He owns it. He may point it out in excess and laugh it off, proving his lack of shame, and other times he simply goes with it - keeps adding more and more commentary until it’s a completely desensitised thing; vanished and forgotten under piles of newer, stranger, and grosser things he’s said since. Sometimes he’d even just let it be, pulling a bit of the ol’ reverse psychology on his friends. _Did- do you_ hear _some of the crap you say?_ Eddie will gape at him. _What?_ _I said something?_ he’d respond, faux-innocent. And they’d all shake their heads and move on, because Richie didn’t pay it any mind, so neither would they. 

Sputtering means regret. Regret means he has something to lose this time around.

The bell rings for class. 

Richie walks in five minutes late and locks stares with Stan across the room, sat at the desk behind his own. Richie doesn’t turn around in his seat a single time, and neither is a single word exchanged between them. When class ends, Stan drops the box of food on Richie’s desk as he’s packing away, and leaves without a word.

* * *

Wentworth Tozier opens the front door to a very frazzled looking Eddie, hands curled in a death-grip around the straps of his bag, cheeks flushed from exertion. Richie’s house was a short walk away - nine minutes to be exact. He didn’t have to run. But he did, because nine minutes was five minutes too long when he knew he could get there in four. Five minutes much too long to be away from a home away from home.

“Hi...! Doc! Doctor Tozier. Hello.” He clears his throat. _A bit much for someone you’ve known for years_. “Is… is Richie home?”

“Oh yeah, he’s somewhere, alright,” Went moves from the entryway as though to let Eddie in regardless of whether Richie was actually home or not. Eddie doesn’t move, though, fiddling with his hands instead. He never fails to feel like a trespasser to their kindness. “Rich!” Went calls up the stairs. “It’s for you!”

“I’m not home!” the prodigal son calls back. 

Went shares a bewildered look with Eddie. “Okay,” he yells. “I’ll just tell Eddie the son he can hear I’m _clearly_ not having a conversation with is _not home._ ”

There’s a loud _huh_ from somewhere on the second floor before Richie is barrelling down the steps without any grace. When he sees Eddie, his drooping shoulders immediately skyrocket.

“Alright, Kaspbrak?” he tosses his way from the bottom of the staircase, suddenly unable to take any steps forward. Went glances between them, a nosy once-over before leaving for the living room. 

Eddie’s face twists and throws the greeting right back at him, “ _Alright, Tozier?”_ Like it’s the most ridiculous way Richie has ever greeted him, and _believe him_ , there have been some _real_ one-hit wonders. More absurd than when the pair of them made faces at each other pressed right up against the semi-circle-shaped window pane on his door for a solid ten minutes before his mother scolded them to wipe it clean, which Eddie happily obliged in. More absurd than when Richie opened the door with his foot mid-handstand and Eddie had to wheelbarrow him by the legs to safety to prevent his face from inevitably bruising. “Can I come in?” 

“Did we have something planned, or…?”

“Oh, _yeah_ , because we only go around seeing each other by making appointments for business meetings. _Uh, sorry Ben, can’t help you with science, I’ve got a meeting with Richard ‘Business’ Tozier to talk about the latest stocks._ The market has been skyrocketing, by the way. I can fax you the graphs and percentages from the presentation. Oh, what’s that? You want the graphs and percentages from _physics_ class? Of course, Ben, of course. My bad. The stock market is just _so much more_ exciting to me, a fifteen-year-old kid.”

“Have you considered doing stand-up comedy, Eds?”

Eddie points a finger at him, mouth shut tight in a thin line, eyes glazed over with an intense shine. It’s a dare. A challenge. Richie raises his hands in surrender and Eddie walks in without Richie’s permission, shutting the door behind him.

“What’s the bag for?” Richie tugs at the handle of his backpack. 

“It’s— well...” Eddie starts and realizes it was probably stupid of him to spring up all of a sudden at the Tozier residence unannounced with the burning intent to stay. It had never been a problem before, but Eddie feels that maybe now, _now,_ is the time it will start being a problem. “I really need to talk. Can we talk? We need to talk.”

Richie pats Eddie’s shoulder. _Young Sir Eds, remain calm! We may indeed parlay!_ Eddie hears it clear as day. They trek up the stairs, Richie’s hand on Eddie’s back a tame support, one they both knew he didn’t need, yet indulged and welcomed regardless. 

“Just don’t- don’t fucking run away from this, okay? I know what you’re like,” Eddie says once they’re both cross-legged on Richie’s bed. 

“Oh boy.” Richie tries to play off his squirm. 

“We just… wanna know. We want you to talk to us, dude,” and he remembers that he’s the only one there. It starts to sink in, where he is, what he’s doing, who’s sitting across from him, what he hoped his bold eagerness would provide. “I… _I_ want you to talk to us. We’re all just gonna go fucking crazy otherwise.”

Richie snorts. “I didn’t realize you guys _stopped_ being crazy after the clown.”

“Do _not_ tell me you wanted to tear Bill’s face off today because of that _thing_ ,” his exasperated look is laced with an exhaustive fondness he _wishes_ he could reel back.

“I dunno, man… you can’t say it’s _not_ It. Anything’s possible at this point!”

“Using the clown as an excuse is a real dick move, Rich.”

“Okay.” Richie tugs at his socks. Eddie flinches. He didn’t come here to hear that flat tone he hates so much.

“Hey, I’ve been wondering. What’s up with you not going to the arcade, like, _at all?_ For over a _year_ now! Did you get banned or something?”

“Yeah,” he blows air out of his nose. “You could say something like that…”

“That sucks, dude,” Eddie says simply. “That fucking sucks,” he repeats again, quieter, for good measure. He doesn’t ask why or what happened. 

The conversation grinds to a halt, and it’s uncomfortable, nothing that Eddie ever wants to feel around Richie. So he scoots on his knees closer to wrap tight arms around him, patting his back, chin tucked over his shoulder. Neither of them miss Richie’s sharp inhale. It’s a hug that says _I’m sorry_ and _I’m here_ and it’s a hug that’s not just from Eddie, but from Bill, and Stan, and Mike, and Ben. When Richie returns the hug tentatively, loose and terrified, he’s saying _I’m sorry_ too. 

Now Richie’s in a predicament because he doesn’t want to let go. He knows any moment now Eddie will move to break it up, and he’ll be unable to, and he’ll have to make up some kind of stupid excuse to keep him there. Richie tries willing himself to cry. He’s unsuccessful though, and Eddie’s gone before he could properly indulge in what he actually got.

“Are you okay?” Eddie asks, and Richie groans as he falls back onto his bed. 

“No,” is his simple reply. He’s more interested in his ceiling. There’s a tiny dark spot in one place where he had killed a moth with a newspaper he taped around the pole of a mop. _I am_ so _fucking ready for the apocalypse_ , he had thought.

Eddie lays down on his side, perpendicular to Richie, and drapes his legs all over his lap. Richie gives him a dry look to which he only grins in response. _What are you gonna do about it?_ it says. Richie smiles and lulls his head back to stare up at nothing again.

“I don’t really know what to tell you. Honestly, Eds, I don’t even understand any of this myself. I just do shit. Without thinking.”

“Wait,” Eddie’s expression is grave. “You noticed that _just now?_ ”

“Okay,” he scoffs out a laugh, turning fully on his side to look at Eddie, sliding an arm under his head.

Eddie smiles. “You know no one’s mad at you. None of us are. When you left to go to the- the fucking _school library_ ,” Eddie gestures a hand into the air: _Seriously?_ “We all just, like, immediately wanted you back. Stan did this full-on speech about you. Kept his food for you and everything. Don’t ask him about it, though. You know he’ll deny it.”

Richie’s grin is big, bright and warm, his cheeks uncontrollably flushed.

“I had a whole fucking daydream _thing_ where I pretended you were still there. Bill had this huge epiphany—”

“You daydreamed about me?” Richie guffaws, cheeks now flushed in their usual purpose.

“Fuck you, no I didn’t—”

“You _just_ said you did, Eds.”

“You must’ve heard wrong. Not surprising at all with your hygiene - when was the last time you _actually_ used a Q-tip? Do you even know what that is?” They’re both holding back bubbling laughter behind wide grins and crinkled eyes.

“Daydreaming about me… how romantic. You got a crush on me, Eds?”

“Fuck off. Fuck you. You have one on me or something?”

Richie feels like throwing up. “Fuck _you!_ ” he yells between fits of laughter, the widest possible grin he can manage plastered stupidly on his face. He’s drunk on joy, and Eddie might be too. He kicks his legs at Richie until they’re entirely draped over him. 

“Can I stay, Rich?” Eddie asks once they’ve relaxed.

“Huh?”

“That’s what my bag’s for. I kind of came here hoping to stay... with no warning whatsoever. Which is… pretty stupid of me. You’re rubbing off on me, man.”

Richie opens his mouth much too quickly to Eddie’s liking, so he shoves a socked foot into Richie’s face before he can say _whatever_ it was he was about to say.

“I heard it the second I fucking said it, okay, I’m not letting you fucking get away with it.”

Richie sputters and laughs, shoving the foot somewhere over his shoulder and curling an arm around Eddie’s leg as though he were a child clutching a soft toy. He taps and slides a finger across the bumpy seam on his jeans where his calf curves.

“Yeah, man, you can stay. You can always stay. I’ll be damned if Mom wouldn’t let you stay with us forever if it was possible. You’re, like, her favorite.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, blushing and bashful. As modest as he is about it, Eddie doesn’t say anything because he knows it’s true. He’d stay here forever if it was possible, too.

“Well… now that I’ve inflated your ego to the size of fucking Uranus—”

“ _Eddie_ , please, spare me, you make this way too easy for me.”

“Yeah, you’re welcome for the free material.” It’s barely a whisper.

Richie wants to reach out, grab, and touch, touch, touch. Wants to keep Eddie near and close and spill every dark and dirty little secret he has, because it takes _one_ good look at the boy and suddenly they’re not so scary, not so dark, and not so dirty as he was led to believe. But that’s an ideal world, one that exists in his mind and not in reality. What’s worse is the _is he, isn’t he? will he, won’t he?_ rhetoric that Richie has somehow persuaded himself of. That somehow it was even vaguely hinted at the slightest of possibility that Eddie might like him too. In _that_ way. In that _scary, dark and dirty_ way, just like Richie. _Would it be so terrible?_ he asks Eddie in his head, with his eyes. But he asks himself too, and despite everything, his answer is always no. _No, it_ wouldn’t _be so terrible._

“ _Right_ , well, we better let _Madam Margarine_ know a certain little _Germ Boy_ of her dreams will be staying in town, then,” he pitter-pats against Eddie’s leg. “Dude, we _need_ to have a double-date. Then, when I tie the knot with your mom and you with mine, _fuck_ , we’d be, like, each other’s _dads._ ” 

“Richie—”

“Yes, dad?”

“Okay, one: _Fuck you_. Two: I think that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say. And three: You’re adopted.”

“Meee- _ow!”_ Richie starts shifting Eddie’s legs to sit up when his eyes instantly grow wide and he launches himself. “Wait— _fuck_ , Eddie, holy shit. Okay, make sure you take care of those pearls well enough to not need a dental for a while because I think ol’ Doc Wenty’s gone insane.”

“Wha— _how?_ What do you mean?”

“The man recorded _every_ Sajak episode of _Wheel_ from the last two years.” Eddie squeaks out an unexpected choke and Richie’s on his feet in a pacing frenzy. “ _Two years_. Do you know how many episodes that is, Eddie? _Do you?_ ” 

“Holy shit—” Eddie cracks, rolling onto his back on the bed to watch Richie through the building laughter he’s struggling to keep calm.

“Four-hundred-and-eighteen, Eds.” Eddie shrieks. “ _Four. Hundred. And. Eight. Teen,”_ Richie claps at every syllable. “And that should be _funny!_ Eddie, I— that’s almost the _stoner code._ The _weed number!_ But I can’t do it! _No_ weed joke is— _Eddie, calm down_ — no weed joke is _ever_ worth a _stoner amount_ of _Pat fucking Sajak_ ,” he’s digging his palms into his eyes as he whines, all while Eddie is in stitches the more Richie raves on about the matter.

“ _Rich, shut_ the— _shut the fuck up_ —”

“Poor thing,” Richie pretends to wipe a tear, presses a hand to his heart and shakes his head. “Hasn’t been the same since it got cancelled. Poor man went completely _loco_. Daytime television is tearing this family apart, Eddie.” 

He can’t keep up the dramatics up for much longer because Eddie’s delightful cackles are _infectious_ , and Richie is _terribly ill_. Horrifically _sick_. Eternally _bed-ridden_. He’s got that dopey grin that breaks out when he successfully makes someone laugh, and when that someone is _Eddie_ , he’s doomed with an ardent wave of lovesickness that seeps through his very being.

“ _You know how crazy_ it gets in this house when _Wheel’s_ on, don’t you?” He’s pinching Eddie’s knees and legs hanging over the side of the bed, inciting a barrage of kicks and yelps of tickled laughter. “ _Don’t you?_ ”

“Fuck- _fuck you,_ I wouldn’t—”

“ _Don’t_ you? _Don’t-you-don’t-you-don’t-you?_ ” Richie’s practically playing whack-a-mole on Eddie’s tummy, the mole being Eddie’s grabby hand that’s just a tad too slow to be able to catch his offending pinchers.

“I wouldn’t—” they’re both in a wheezing, snickering fit, Richie having dropped onto his back again beside him. “I wouldn’t miss it for the- the fucking _world._ ”

* * *

Beverly and her aunt cross the _Welcome to Derry_ sign, and the hairs on the back of her neck instantly stand up. It’s a warning instead of a greeting.

Her palms get clammy and she wipes them down on her lap. She had come to an arrangement with Bill that they’d start calling each other once-daily again, doing little tests like skipping an extra day or two then checking to see what she could recall. She desperately wanted to get to the bottom of these sudden episodes of memory loss. They kept the calls brief, no longer than a minute - Bill didn’t want to risk shaking his rocky but recovering relationship with his parents by racking up a hefty phone bill.

She leans forward to turn up the radio’s volume, some old-timey station playing oldies from the Fifties. Her hands shake gently as she turns the knob.

“Honey? We’ll be there in maybe a minute. Why—”

“I just love this song,” Bev says, snappy and forced. “It’s one of my favorites.” It’s her first time listening to it.

Her aunt hums a thoughtful noise, shooting her a quick glance before returning to the road.

“Beverly… are you alright?” she asks, softer, quieter.

She doesn’t answer immediately. She stares distantly at nothing, somewhere on the car’s dashboard instead of the town right in front and all around her, and thankfully it’s late in the evening so most of it is shrouded under a sheet of darkness. Her silence is long enough that it answers for her.

“I’m fine,” she lies anyway.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

“I do. I really do, more than anything.”

Her aunt hums again, “I just… I don’t want you to have any regrets or- or force yourself to come here…”

“I don’t have any regrets, Auntie,” she unfurls a small smile. “They’re… the only good thing about this town. I’ll be fine.” Her aunt smiles back with overwhelming warmth.

“Alright, I’m positive now,” her focus is back on the road but she reaches over and covers Bev’s hand in her lap. “I’m positive that you are the bravest girl in the entire world.”

“Oh _jeez_ ,” Bev huffs, raising her free hand to cover her eyes, and her aunt is in complete utter _delight_ at the scene.

She relishes in it, getting those innocent little reactions out of Beverly. She would do anything to keep that smile on her face, to give her the childhood she deserved, to make up for the one she lost. She would happily repay the actions of the monster that married her sister until her last dying breath if she had to. But Beverly has a fiery old soul within her. Those first few weeks in Portland sometimes felt like she was living with the ghost of her older sister instead of the thirteen-year-old girl now under her care. 

_She kept herself locked up in her new room for days, only coming out to eat and shower, and the only noises heard were her silent barely-there sobs. It shattered her aunt’s heart to pieces. Then one fateful evening, while having a smoke out on her tiny third-floor balcony that only had room for a plastic garden chair and a portable folding clothesline, Beverly would tip-toe right up beside her._

_“Hello,” she tried, but Beverly remained silent._

_Her unsettled hands held onto the railing, eyes downcast as she bit the inside of her cheek. She resembled both a suspect standing at the accused’s podium in a courtroom as the judge hands them down the guilty sentence, and a small child doing the timid walk of shame into a parent’s bedroom at three in the morning to tell them they had thrown up. Beverly turned towards her then, but she was staring at the cigarette between her aunt’s fingers, eyes painted in guilt and embarrassed sadness._

_She follows her niece’s stare to the almost depleted stub in her hand then flashes back at the girl. “Do you… want me to put it out?”_

_“No!” she croaks out, a little too fast and a little too loud. Her aunt raises a brow. “I mean… it’s- it’s fine. I just…” she’s picking at loose paint on the railing._

_It dawns on her. “Bev… you shouldn’t be smoking at such a young age. Thirteen… that’s insanely young.”_

_“I… sorry. I’m sorry,” and she turned to leave._

_“Bev!” She gestures with her head for Beverly to return and join her again._

_So she does, and she’s picking at the railing paint again, minty green flakes falling around her feet and to the streets below._

_“How long have you…” her aunt tries._

_“Seventh grade. Um… my- my dad, he_ — _” a momentary sharp inhale. “He was always_ — _he always smoked, anyway? So, I just… I was already… even if I never used a cigarette, it’s like I— like I would’ve been smoking anyway?” She words her every statement and answer like a question: Is this okay? Do I have permission? Am I allowed to say this? Am I saying it right? Do you hear me? Do you agree with me? Do you believe me? Are you judging me? Will you hate me now?_

_Am I remembering this correctly?_

_Her aunt assures her with no-wrong-answer nods and sad eyes exuding endless sympathy, encouraging her to keep going. Beverly swallows._

_“I hated it, but I lived with it. I guess I thought that maybe if I… if I picked it up, and got used to it, then I’ll be able to handle it better. Easier,” she shuts her eyes tight and furrows her brows. “And- and then school in that place was just_ — _I smoked, and it all went away, and I could breathe again, and isn’t that just the stupidest thing? Smoking helped me breathe. A pack of smokes. Not an… inhaler.” A shaky laugh escapes her. “Cigarettes. So stupid.”_

_The older woman watches the street below, nodding as she blows out smoke. The stub has maybe one or two drags left to it. She stares intensely at the damn thing, this pathetic little thing that stares right back with an intensity that causes her throat to constrict._

_“Smoking kills you. This thing will kill you, Bev. Addiction, stroke, heart disease, blood disease, diabetes, lung cancer_ — _hell, cancer anywhere in your body. You name it.”_

_Beverly watches her with a faraway look in her eyes and her expressions cycle rapidly between understanding, gentle frowns and concentration._

_“So,” she holds the stub out for Beverly to take. “Let’s quit this thing. Together,” she smiles with her whole face: her determined glint, dimples popped, every crease and wrinkle and laughter line a warm memory. “What do you say?”_

_Beverly sees her mother. Or, feels her, rather. She can’t recall her at all, but in that very moment, her body and mind scream it to be true. Then she sees herself, a mirror image of sad but piercing cold eyes and fiery hair. Winter fire. Something pinches in her palm, an itch she wants to scratch until it stings, until it bleeds, but before her now stands a familiar stranger, still offering her the cigarette stub, and she’s transfixed. The red-haired woman says her name, and then she’s gone. Her aunt returns, whose smile falters before it transforms into concern. Beverly’s sharp inhale cuts off whatever it was her aunt was about to say, and she snatches the stub from her fingers, slipping it hastily between her lips and breathing it in with the desperation of being underwater and only breaching the surface at the last possible second. Gasping, floating, burning._

_“God,” she chokes out after blowing out smoke. “You sound just like… like…” Like who?_

_She frowns, trying to recall a name to the face or a face to the name, of which she has neither. Only a squeaky disembodied voice that resembles the faceless and voiceless people you would see and not-see in the backgrounds of dreams: A new population of strangers formed from the deep recesses of memory. Her aunt gives her the dozenth worried look that night._ I’m worried about you, Bevvie, _she hears her father, and she begs for the squeaky voice again._

_“Like someone I know. Something I heard on TV somewhere, probably…” she puts the cigarette out before finishing it. “Let’s do it. It’ll be good, I think.”_

Back in Derry, her aunt pulls up to park at a curb in the residential area. Beverly can’t seem to find it in herself to leave the car, though.

“This will probably sound crazy but… the second we drove past that welcome sign, I’ve just been _screaming_ inside for a smoke,” her laugh is empty.

“I don’t blame you. I think I’m the same. I never even lived here!”

“This town has to be haunted or something,” and her mind flashes briefly of sewers and the color red. 

“Well, these boys of yours must really be something, then. I think I got this address right, anyway…?”

“It… it’s familiar, I think I recognize it. I think you’re right.”

They had agreed for Bev to stay at the Tozier’s in their guestroom for the two nights before her aunt picked her up again. But it was like the second she passed on the address to her aunt all those weeks ago, she immediately forgot about Richie’s existence. Bill was the only one who remained in her mind through insistence alone. She discovers she isn’t alone in the matter when the front door opens.

Maggie Tozier’s face lights up with an _oh!_ and she instantly calls back over her shoulder.

“Richie! Why didn’t you remind me your friend was arriving tonight?”

“Huh?” a voice, Richie’s, calls from somewhere in the house, with another quieter _what?_ hissing at him.

He swaggers to the door and his confusion melts into pure ecstasy, all but grabbing Beverly into a bone-crushing hug. “ _Holy shit…!”_

“Language,” Maggie sighs and gives Beverly’s aunt one of those motherly looks. _What can you do?_ it says.

Beverly is dragged inside before she can even say goodbye, so a _bye Auntie!_ from the living room must suffice.

“Oh, what the _fuck?_ ” Eddie’s immediately on his feet and knocking the air out of Beverly’s lungs for the second time that night. He even tries to pick her up with the hug, but it lasts about a second before he has to drop her, holding her out at arm's length instead. They’re about the same height right now. Richie is towering beside them by a head.

“Okay, so, don’t get mad, but I… may have _completely_ blanked out that you were arriving tonight,” he rubs the back of his neck. “S’why pipsqueak is here.”

“Uh, _sure_ , Bev or no Bev, if I wasn’t here you’d be bawling like a baby,” Eddie turns to aside to Bev. “You have _no_ fucking idea what we’ve had to live with these last couple weeks.”

“Yeah, man, even I’m on his side this time. I mean, I hung out with _Ben_ ,” he waits for Bev to see the severity of that, but she doesn’t even flinch. “At the _library_ ,” and that’s when her eyebrows shoot up into her hair, still short, still fiery, still wild and unruly. “I _know!_ ” Richie exclaims at the reaction.

“Ben… wow,” she mutters. “I can’t believe it’s been…”

“The two most _boring_ years of our lives, come here _you_ ,” and Richie headlocks his two friends into his chest with both his arms. “Eddie, I must thank you for your efforts in trying and failing to cheer me up, but I don’t need you anymore.” Eddie punches him in the stomach.

“I’m… surprised, actually. You’re allowed to be _here?_ At this hour?” The boys don’t miss her insinuation. 

“Spaghetti’s kind of a badass, now. I’m not the only one who has to sneak out anymore, he does it all the time now, can you believe? I almost, _almost_ , kind of feel bad for Mrs K,” Richie sighs. “Ah, my old flame…”

“You’re not funny, dude.”

“ _Old_ flame?” Beverly laughs in-between feigned shock. “You broke up?”

“Oh yeah, it’s been real heartbreaking. Eds here took it the hardest, I think,” he drapes an arm around his shoulders. “Couldn’t handle the gaping hole in his mother’s life, and I mean that in _more_ ways than o- _ouagh!_ ” He’s shoved face-first into the couch. Eddie is pretending to brush his hands clean of dust. 

Beverly’s bright laughter erupts like she hadn’t been away from Derry for even a second. She drops her bag by the couch and joins Richie there while Eddie pulls over an ottoman to sit on in front of the pair, cheeks in his hands, elbows on his knees. 

“So, wait, does that mean you’re…” she trails off, staring between the both of them.

“ _You’re_ … what?” Eddie asks simply.

Richie bores into her with glassy eyes.

“Nothing. Nevermind. How are the others?”

“No, _what?_ You can’t just drop something like _that_ on us then go _oh! Nevermind!_ ” Richie’s defensive mechanism is speaking for him and he begs it to let it go for once. He can’t, though. It’s too enticing, too thrilling, living on the edge like this. 

“Yeah, like you _are_ aware you’re talking to _us_. The other guys are boring and will gladly let it go. Us?” he waves a frantic finger between himself and Richie. “Not a chance.”

“I’m telling Stan you called him boring,” Richie declares, to the relief of Bev. He almost wants to sprint to the phone to call Stan that very second.

“No you’re not. No you won’t.” He looks a little nervous. “Don’t you dare.”

Richie gawks at him and can’t keep the laugh in. “Holy shit, Eds. I wasn’t going to but now I _so_ am.”

“No! Fuck you, you won’t. You won’t because you know I’ll die. I’ll die if you do.”

“Eddie, Eds, _sweetheart, honey, darling_ … that is _precisely_ why I will.”

When he moves to get up, Eddie is on him instantly, swatting and smacking and smothering him with the nearest couch pillows he can reach, and Richie is blissfully shrieking all the while reaching out for Bev with grabby, searching hands tugging at her sleeve in a beg for aid. A pillow comes into contact with Eddie’s head and he drops beside Richie. At the sight of Bev hovering above them, her own weaponised couch pillow in hand and a cheeky little coy smile on her lips, they’re stunned silent. Richie wants to call Stan right now. He wants to call Stan, and Bill, and Ben and Mike, and he wants them all over right now, right this second. It’s sacrilege, he thinks, that all seven Losers are in Derry again and not together in some way, shape, or form.

The half-wrestling-half-pillow-fight match that follows ends when Went has no choice but to break them up, though even he couldn’t help the grin and urge when he claimed the final pillow hit by dropping three of the heavy things onto his son’s head. Bev and Eddie are in stitches by the end of it. The boys fill her in on some of the highlights she missed out on and she does the same, over three cups of Ovaltine courtesy of Maggie. Eddie’s obsessed with the stuff and ends up finishing both Richie and Bev’s cups, which they couldn’t stomach more than half of. It’s a little over eleven in the evening when they’re compelled to head to bed for the big day, though it’s laughable to think they would actually fall asleep at a reasonable hour that night. As agreed, Beverly takes the guest room while the boys take Richie’s room, as always, sleeping bags in tow. 

_“What’s the other bag for?” Eddie scrunches his face, pointing at the oversized rolled-up thing in Richie’s arms._

_“To sleep in?”_

_“You have a bed?”_

_“Yeah, but you sleeping on the floor while I get my nice, cozy, warm bed is stupid, Eds. And I told you already, it’s yours if you want it, but you keep saying no.”_

_“Yeah, because God knows what kind of undiscovered species of fatal viral bacteria are reproducing in your sheets. Don’t call me Eds.”_

_“Well, there you go! I’m not gonna be an asshole and make you sleep on the ground by yourself.”_

_“Wow, you are the height of chivalry. Why is it that you’re an asshole at literally every other possible opportunity, then?”_

_“Because you love it!”_

_The bags have been rolled out and placed next to each other on the floor beside Richie’s bed._ Idiot, _Eddie thinks as they crawl in. It had become an agreement between them then, that in every future sleepover, so long as Eddie refuses to take the bed, Richie will be on the floor beside him every time._

Years later and they’re still tucked up to their chins on the floor, and it is _freezing_. It was now a silent challenge between them to see who’d be the first to bail into the warmth of the bed. 

“So… tomorrow… moment of truth…” Richie mutters.

“Yeah.”

“Have you been practicing?”

Eddie glances over. “Practicing what?”

“ _S, s, s, s… A, a, a, a… F, f, f ,f_ —” he sings, providing his own echo, until Eddie’s arm lands across his face to shut him up.

“Will you _let_ it go? It was _one fucking time_.”

“One fucking time that I will cherish in my heart for the rest of my life,” he drops a hand over his chest. “Please don’t learn new material. Ever.”

“I can’t tell if this is a reverse-psychology thing to get me to pick up something new for you to make fun of me for.”

“ _Ooo_ , now there’s a thought.”

“Can you shut up and go to sleep?”

The silence that follows lasts about twenty seconds.

“What are you gonna wear?” Eddie asks quietly.

“Pipe down, Kaspbrak. I’m trying to get my pre-prom beauty sleep,” and his arm drapes over Eddie’s eyes next to him just as he had done to him moments ago.

Eddie pulls the invading arm off but keeps it on his sleeping bag over his chest, trapping it under his own arms. Richie quirks a smile.

“Are you embarrassed or something?” and Richie can _feel_ the despicable grin radiating off Eddie’s face as he says it.

“ _No_ , I just don’t see why it matters. You wanna make sure we match or something?”

“ _No_ , jeez, if it’s really that embarrassing of an outfit then _don’t_ tell me.” Eddie’s tapping at Richie’s arm over his chest, pinching softly at the skin and pulling at his fingers. “Maybe we _should_ match, so you don’t show up in God-knows-what and embarrass us all.”

“ _Edward Kaspbrak_ , are you asking me to match with you to prom?”

“That is literally _not_ what I said at all—”

“Goodness, how _scandalous_. What will your _mother_ think?”

“Alright. Goodnight.” He throws Richie’s arm off as he turns in the opposite direction.

“No-no-no— wait! I’m sorry!” Richie’s pawing the same arm over Eddie’s sleeping bag, laughing and gushing foolishly in the hopes of it covering up how eager he actually is about having it played with again.

Eddie glances over his shoulder. “What are you sorry for?”

“Sorry I declined your promposal to match with me at prom?”

Eddie scoffs, fully turning to face Richie again. “You declined?”

Richie’s smile is silly and shy and he’s rather glad about the pitch-blackness of his room, the street lights outside being their only source of illumination obscured by his bed that now seems somewhat colder than the floor.

“Maybe I didn’t.”

And they stare at each other, as adolescent boys do in the face of unspoken things they have no words for. As they do in the hopes that something else will speak for them and save them the struggle. Always seeking those shortcuts that unfortunately do not exist in reality. Richie’s thinking of a pocket knife and a bridge and initials and hopes that Eddie is somehow psychic right now, waiting on a sign to confirm said hopes. And he’s _not_ , but it’s in that moment that Eddie decides to pull Richie’s arm over his sleeping bag again, pinning it beneath his own draping arm. So now Richie can’t sleep. Because he’s trying to grasp his head around Eddie’s potentially _very real_ psychic abilities. If he _has_ been psychic this entire time, and what that would mean for Richie. Exactly how many of his thoughts have been read? The safety of his own mind has been compromised by his rampant imagination and he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself.

“Hey, Eddie.” It’s almost one in the morning. “Eds.” An irritated hum responds. Richie is quiet.

“What?” Eddie insists again at his prolonged silence.

“Are you psychic?”

Eddie shoots him the most outrageously cutest bewildered glare Richie had ever seen grace that rambunctious little face. He thinks that perhaps that alone was worth having every thought of his exposed.

“Huh?”

“Are you psychic? Like, can you read minds—”

“Are you stupid?”

It knocks Richie speechless, his mouth closing, opening, closing. He’s met with Eddie’s back again once he rolls over without another word, but it’s three winks and his touch revisits Richie’s arm nestled under his own. Pats and grips and taps, nails digging faintly in a relieving scritch-scratch along his goosebumped forearm, drawing on and pressing the pads of his fingers into his palm, gentle and slow and mindless. Richie refuses to close his eyes and risk sleep; he’s stunted and left thoughtless for what feels like the first time in his life. He savors every second of it, every brush, every burn, every secret excuse, easily disguised under the delirium of sleep. Eddie eventually stills after curling his fingers around Richie’s thumb.

Richie is a painting. A painting you cannot just look at but a painting you must experience. A painting you must brush a hand across to feel every solid bump and bubble, every high and every low. Eddie has long-since decided he’s pretty ride-or-die with the whole experience that is Richie Tozier. It’s in the hands that are never off him, seeking those highs and lows. It’s in the bump of rebellion and bubble of bravery that lives through Eddie in every touch, every laugh, every memory and moment. 

At the gallery, the critics, guides and experts will _talk_ about the best way to experience Richie, but would never dare to actually lay a finger on the priceless piece. Eddie is the little kid whose childlike wonder and curiosity splits him from his mother, not feeling lost or scared in the slightest when it happens, and with no sense of the rules and etiquette of art galleries and museums, he crosses the single ruby-red rope barrier with ease and presses his tiny hands against the painting that pulled him. It doesn’t phase him when security yanks him away and when he’s being endlessly scolded and judged. To his little child's mind, all that matters is that he touched the painting. His favorite painting in the whole wide world. 

_I_ am _stupid_ , Richie thinks as he slowly loses consciousness. _I am. I am._

_Would you be stupid with me?_

* * *

The rest of the boys arrive at Richie’s house in the morning. They clamor past Richie before he can even greet them to make a straight beeline for a bed-headed Beverly and Eddie on the couch, practically dogpiling her with hugs. Richie isn’t going to have it. There is no dogpile happening _without_ him, so he vaults over the back of the couch and drops on the lot, crushing them all. Tozier house, Tozier rules. 

Maggie shoots the rambunctious bundle of bodies a crazed little look from the kitchen before returning her attention to the fuzzy radio personality on the kitchen counter discussing the mundane and uninteresting events of the day.

Like the mundane and uninteresting things in Beverly’s life that the Losers are desperately asking about, just _because_. Just to _know_. To _remember_. To relearn all her tics and mannerisms and peeves and passions that they never actually forgot. They theorize on Beverly’s strange memory loss and come to the unanimous conclusion that her being the only one caught in the deadlights was likely the only logical explanation for it. She’s not entirely a hundred percent, but it’s enough of a scapegoat for her to forget about it. There were more pressing matters for the day, you see.

“Are we all ready for prom tonight, girls?” Bev loosely rests both her arms on Eddie and Stan’s shoulders on either side of her.

“Oh, it’s going to be a rager. Alcohol, drugs, vandalism—”

“Try that again, Tozier,” Maggie calls from the kitchen.

“Well, fellas, turns out I can’t actually go tonight. Mom said no, so… you know,” Richie smacks his lap with both palms and sucks in a hiss. “Such a shame. Hope you have fun without me.”

“We will nn- _not_ have fun if you’re not there,” Bill says. “I mean, who _else_ is going to threat-threaten to b-break my nose?”

“Richard, you did _what?_ ” Maggie pipes in again.

“ _Mother, dearest_ , would you _like_ to join the conversation? Also, did you know, when people eavesdrop, they _usually_ tend to make sure not to comment on everything? Since they’re, you know, _eavesdropping._ It’s important to me that you know that.”

She rolls her eyes, dismissing his sarcasm with a wave of her hand. “It’s my _job_ to eavesdrop and comment on the things that have to do with the Smart Aleck that lives in this house.”

“Dad?” Richie makes a show of looking around their little group circle on the couch in a pretend-frenzy. He pulls Bill up to rise a tad so he can check the cushioned seat under his ass. “Is he here? Hello? _Dad?_ ”

Maggie is impassive to his display as she returns to the catalogue she’s flipping through. “ _I stand corrected._ ” That’s _two_ Smart Alecks that live in that house.

“I think it’s time to invite your mom into The Losers Club, Rich,” says Stan, the shit-eating grin reserved solely for Richie on full display.

“Hey, _Stan_ , so, by the way, funny story: Eddie called you boring last night. He also said you held a speech where you professed your deep, undying love for me at the cafeteria and wanted to take me for a romantic candle-lit dinner before prom.”

Eddie squawks, looking as stupefied as a goldfish does, his mouth a tiny blubbering _‘o’_ , shaking his head between Richie and Stan, the latter of which is already in mid-completion of the weapons he is crafting with his eyes. Soon, when they’re finished, primed and ready, they’ll be targeted missiles with Eddie’s name on them. Bill, however, has a more pressing query.

“You slep-slept over?”

“Yeah, well…! _Someone_ had to get through this idiot’s thick skull!” 

Bill snorts. “You actually muh-managed to?”

Eddie’s half-laugh response is staved off by the staring contest Stan has silently locked him into.

“That’s really funny, Bill. Where’d you get that one? The amateur joke store?”

“Actually, I, uh, I got lost on my way to- to your house. Had to ask fuh-for d-directions. It’s weird but- but I ended up at that ss-store for some- some reason.”

Richie nods. “Pretty good, Denbrough.”

“So, _are_ you going to the dance?” Mike asks, having only been briefed just that morning about the Losers’ clash.

“Did you not hear me? My _mom_ said _no_ ,” Richie shrugs at him with a grin. 

“He’s going,” Ben provides in an aside.

“Were you... _not_ going to go?” Bev’s concern pipes in.

“It was stupid. Really, _really_ stupid. You really don’t need to worry about it,” Stan waves a hand, and it’s like he had cast a spell with the gesture as she is reminded of Richie and Bill’s spat in ‘89. “At least _these_ two finally kissed and made up in time for prom or else we would _not_ be able to hear the end of it.”

“ _Finally?!_ ” Richie. 

_“Made up?!”_ Eddie.

“Oh, th- _those are_ the parts you have puh-problems with…” Bill chuckles with his cheeks in his hands, elbows on knees.

“His beef was with _you_ Bill,” Eddie points an accusatory finger. “You _all_ need to _make up_.”

“No, hey, Eds, c’mon, it wasn’t. I had no _beef_ with him. It was more like, a slice of ham,” Richie shrugs, turning to Bill and Stan. “For the record, I… _sorry_ ,” he says it with the exhale of his breath.

“Wow, that looked like it was _really_ difficult for you,” Stan remarks with a smirk. Richie flips him off with a grin.

He catches Bill’s gaze then, ever patient and understanding. “Hey man, Billy Boy, _Big Bill_ … I, uh, I was way out of line, man. So… _bygones be bygones?_ ” 

Richie knows he owes him more than that, knows he owes him the complete truth, his whole damn life on a prince’s platter for him to pick apart however much he wants. But he knows that the only one who had actually been picking him apart like they do the vile incomprehensible cafeteria food served on Wednesdays - their worst menu day - was Richie himself. 

“Bygones be bygones,” Bill smiles and holds out a hand for Richie to slap into, which he does, and they end it with a faux explosion and a waggle of their fingers. They leave it at that because there’s nothing for them to say that either of them don’t already know, and it’s _enough_.

“ _For the record,”_ Stan starts. “I’m sorry, too. We have your back. Even if it _is_ weird and gargantuan and hairy—”

“Okay. Okay, Stan. We _almost_ had a moment there. You were _so_ close,” Richie presses his index and thumb together as tight as he can without having them actually touch. “This close. Besides, it’s not even hairy.”

“It’s pretty hairy.”

“You are _one_ to talk, Edward. Have you _seen_ what’s on your face?”

“Have you seen what’s on _yours?!_ ”

Richie wants to kiss him. Then and there. In an ideal world, he already has.

Richie claps his hands together - one of those inhumanly deafening claps that leaves eardrums feeling utterly shattered any time it was successfully executed - and jumps to his feet.

“Alright, you _Joanies_ and _Herbs_ , let’s make like Mrs K’s bedroom during our honeymoon and _bounce!_ ”

Cue the groans.

The school is open all day for students to plan, prepare, and decorate on campus if they so wish. The Losers will be arriving once doors open at six in the evening - they have absolutely no reason to be willingly hanging out on school grounds during a freebie day off - so until then, they’re relearning their place in Derry as a complete unit, making sure to engage in all of the mundanely fun, daring, and stupid group rituals and traditions they’d do around town when they were all together. Bar the quarry, of course. It’s November. Forty degrees. It’d be utterly deranged to even consider it. They might get hypothermia just _thinking_ about it. 

They go to see _Two Evil Eyes_ at the Aladdin first thing, and it was kind of _ridiculous_ to them that they’d be watching a horror flick at _ten in the morning_. Everything aligns, however, when they realise they had the entire theatre screen to themselves: they’d sit in different rows, tossing and trying to catch long-distance popcorn throws into mouths; hurdle race each other by jumping across the rows of seats; belt along to the theme song as loud as they could until it got stuck in their heads; Mike, Bill and Bev hoisting each other up to make hand shadow puppets in front of the projector’s light onto the big screen, while Richie was _being Richie_ on the small stage directly in front of the screen for almost the entirety of the film, Stan and Eddie heckling him while they ate all the other Losers’ snacks, and Bev had particularly enjoyed annoying Richie with her snapping crocodile shadow where she’d mime it trying to bite his head off. Ben was the only one who actually watched the film and somehow managed to not get distracted by his wonderfully crazy friends.

When they make their way to the arcade afterwards, they keep cracking each other up every time one of them bursts out into the melody of _Dreaming Dreams_ at random points in conversation, and it becomes an inside joke they quickly start to hate when Richie and Bill start improvising their own juvenile lyrics to the tune. Eddie and Stan’s own retaliating lyrics were along the lines of begging them to stop singing because they’ve beaten the damn song into the ground far enough already, _which they would then sing along to in that same accursed melody anyway_.

“I think that we all sound _delightful_ ,” Richie mocks.

“I think we sound like my mom during hymns at Sunday service.”

“Ah, just like Eddie’s mom: a little bit _dying whale_ , a little bit _chain smoker on five packs a day_ \- I think we should start a band.”

“Oh, wow, _hilarious_ , Richie. Really, my sides are splitting.” Eddie’s stone-faced and monotoned. 

“ _I_ think that we should _absolutely no way never in a million years_ form a band,” Stan declares, aghast at the mere thought. He looks from one Loser to the next until he’s given each and every one of them a good menacing once-over, then cracks an impish little grin. “But I _can_ play a pretty mean piano.”

Richie gasps and points at him with both fingers, arms fully outstretched. “ _That's_ my _Stan the God damn Man!”_

Once inside the arcade, Eddie’s eyes instantly lock onto Richie. He didn’t mention anything about his ban to the Losers so neither did Eddie, but it begins to dawn on him that there don’t actually seem to be any problems with Richie’s presence there at all. Eddie frowns, bitterly pondering why Richie would lie to him about something as trivial and mundane as getting banned at an arcade.

On the other hand, Richie feels safe. He’s with his favorite people in the entire world, and with them around, suddenly there’s no longer anything for him to risk losing or revealing. He feels goddamn invincible - a sense both lofty and grounding in his feet. He _dares_ anyone to show up and say something to him, to try _anything_. He feels like he can take on a wrestler. And _win_. He sobers the thoughts up almost immediately, though, hoping he won’t actually _think_ the dreaded scenarios into actual existence. _Knock on wood, Tozier._

They completely lose track of time in the arcade, enveloped by almost every cabinet on display, the competitive adrenaline that each of them possessed demanding more rounds and even more rematches. They snap a photo strip together again, almost identical to the first they had taken two years prior, and it’s the last thing they do before leaving the building with fries wrapped in paper cones and sinfully delicious hotdogs. 

The clubhouse would be their final stop before going home to get dolled-up. Bev falls on her back onto the makeshift couch, a content sigh escaping her. She’s draped along its entire length with her legs kicking out over the edge, feet crossed against one of the ottomans acting as armrests for the “couch”. _Enjoying yourself, there? You look like royalty on that thing,_ Mike had chipperly commented. _I_ feel _like royalty,_ Bev mused, and that is how they end up naming the couch ‘Bev’s Throne’. Richie insisted then that the hammock should be called ‘Richie’s Throne’ since he’s the only one who uses it— _I think the fuck not,_ was Eddie’s snappy counterpoint.

Before they know it, it’s time to get ready; they say their _goodbyes_ and _see you laters_ , some sooner than others, and decide to meet up again at the gym venue itself. Richie would be lying if he said he wasn’t ecstatic about the fact he’d be arriving there with Bev, likely looking like a couple to onlookers. _A power couple if I ever saw one_ , he mused, grinning to himself.

Beverly’s dress is a pretty little thing: a shining metallic gown that flares out at the skirt, sleeves that circle around her biceps while the dress itself was held up around her collar with a black lace she had tailored to it together with her aunt. Next to her, Richie feels like a complete trainwreck - he doesn’t look like he’s going to prom, he looks like he’s going to a retirement home. It was all going well, scrounging his closet for _anything_ decently formal that he owned, until he needed a jacket. And a tie. Maybe. Was it important? He wishes he’d told Eddie what he was going to wear so Eddie would tell him as well and clue him in. All his talk about preparations months beforehand and here he is himself a last-minute mess.

So, _here he is_ , in an old white church shirt that he hasn’t worn in years and is just a little tight in the armpits, the pair of baby blue trousers he wore to Stan’s Bar Mitzvah, black dress shoes, his father’s old moth-bitten brown dress jacket since he’s grown out of the baby blue one that went with his pants, and finally, to make up for the atrocity of it all, he picked out the most colorful, most atrocious, loudest tie that his father owns for that classic Richie Tozier flair. It’s bright orange and oh so annoying; he’s kind of in love with it. 

Maggie insisted on taking photos of them - separate _and_ together. _You know we’re not actually each other’s dates, mom?_ he’d say. _I do, I do, but you two just look so darling,_ she’d say. So here they were, putting on a show for her with all kinds of nutty and wild poses and expressions. They jived together in the living room, not a clue as to what they were doing, clumsily stepping on each others’ feet, laughing away, as Maggie snapped a goldmine of delightful little candids. They, of course, also decide to take one of those particularly cheesy awkward prom photos where the guy hugs the girl from behind and they both seem to have conveniently forgotten what a smile is, except Bev insisted that she be the one behind Richie. Their awkwardly forced not-smile grimaces are so comically horrific that even Maggie squirms while looking through the viewfinder. 

They take one serious photo in the end: a tight side-hug with beaming toothy grins, sweet and full of heart. But nothing is ever fully serious when Richie’s involved, so until those photos get developed, Bev will never know about the bold _V_ behind her head that his fingers were responsible for. He’s so utterly elated and in the highest of spirits by the end that he’s beholden to his mother for insisting on the shenanigans in the first place. She kisses them both on their foreheads, a motherly _thanks_ for indulging her whims, then shoos them off into Went’s car.

Beverly Marsh was the last person he expected to have prom photos with. They weren’t the photos he expected nor were they the ones he actually _wanted_. He loves Beverly, he really does, but he finds himself drowning in those _what-if_ scenarios from that perfect and ideal world that exist only in the safety of his imagination. She - his mind - keeps all those little scenarios in the dosette box that is his brain, that he must carry around and remember to take every day so he doesn’t get sick. He takes them because they keep him quiet. One second his hand will be on Eddie. _Richie-dear_ , she asks him, _have you taken your pills today?_ The next second he retracts it and imagines his hand on Eddie instead; if these thoughts will be occurring anyway, then at least it’ll be safer this way, in his head, in the safety of his mind, his imagination, where they can fester and fade with no repercussion. Except they never fade. When Eddie readjusts his fanny pack, Richie readjusts his glasses.

In what felt like a blink of an eye, they arrived. All thoughts about perfect prom attire and ideal prom dates and secret personal dances no longer mattered. Beverly’s arm is linked with his and every step they take closer towards the gymnasium twists his gut just that little bit more than he actually feels comfortable with. Just outside the entrance doors, he leans forward against the nearest brick wall.

“ _Richie Tozier_ … are you actually nervous?” Bev’s patting his back.

“Hah! Could you imagine if I was? _Pshh_ —” and he cuts himself off with a weird half-gag noise in the back of his throat.

“Oh boy,” Bev whispers.

“I’m okay. I’m okay,” he straightens up and pulls the lapels of his jacket, puts on a voice while he’s at it. “ _Let us be off, madame. I believe we are expected. Tally-ho!_ ”

“Take it easy, Rich,” she laughs, linking her arm with his again.

 _But take it_ , Richie’s mind adds.

The gymnasium is awash in dream-pop colors of pink and purple, glittering silver and gold confetti and streamers litter the floor that should not even be there yet, small cheap-looking rotating disco ball lamps placed sparsely about the gym, and— _fucking balloons_. Talking Head’s _Burning Down The House_ blares to accompany the few brave souls who have already begun stiffly stepping side-to-side at the centre of the floor, a filler before the main event begins. 

It’s easy to spot the other Losers - in the same spot they always loiter around at these stupid dances - by the gym benches closest to the refreshments table. Most of the Losers, at least. Mike, Stan and Bill catch them approaching and start waving wildly like lunatics to get their attention, as though Bev and Richie _haven’t_ already been instantly beelining right for them. 

“ _Miiiiike_ …” Richie calls out to him with a huge grin on his face, arms outstretched.

Mike throws up a hand with his fingers crossed. “I got in! No trouble at all!” He’s positively glowing, a beaming smile that could challenge every other twinkling light in the room. They greet-hug and clap each other on the back.

Mike’s also wearing one of his father’s old suits, but that’s just the thing with Mike - it _suits_ him. Pun intended. He can make _anything_ work. Stan and Bill are classic guys. Bill with the black two-piece suit and white shirt, no tie, and Stan has the same but without the jacket, and a bow tie. Richie points to it, giving Stan a _look_ , like it’s a tumorous growth. Stan flips him off. Another thing Stan has is a tiny blue ribbon with daisies weaved into it pinned to his shirt. Richie points to that now, giving him the same look (it's a foot boil this time). Stan flips him off with both hands, and blushes. _Blushes!_

Stan retaliates by pointing a swift finger at Richie’s aggravatingly startling tie. And fair enough, he has a point. They look amazing, gorgeous, handsome - beautiful people surrounded by beautiful people. Richie looked like he stepped out of an episode of _Scooby-Doo._ Not even a particularly good episode, at that.

It’s like the universe is taunting Richie’s nerves when Ben and Eddie are nowhere to be seen. Nik Kershaw’s _Wide Boy_ plays over Bill trying to explain that the pair have been called out to show the parent chaperones around the building. Such is the curse of standing around and looking like you’re doing nothing: you _will_ get singled out. 

Bill, the homewrecker, decides to shoot his shot.

“You look b-b-beaut- _beautiful_ , Bev…” he exhales with relief when he manages to get it out this time.

She smiles, shy and sweet. “You too…” and, well, it was not the response she intended. She slowly shuts her eyes with a groan of a sigh.

“Aww, she said you look _beautiful_ , Billy boy. The _belle of the ball!_ ” Richie earns a light shove from Bev. 

“D-do… do you…” Bill rubs the back of his neck before holding his hand out. “Do you... want t-to dance?”

Richie takes his hand, “I thought you’d _never_ ask,” and Bill swipes it away, lips quirking with knotted brows.

“Wow, you’re going to be like this _all night_ , huh…” Stan mumbles.

“Stanny, you say that like you haven’t been to school dances with me every single year since fifth grade.”

“I _wish_ I haven’t.”

Richie pretends to stumble backwards with a hand on his heart, as though he’s been shot in the chest. Stan makes a gun with his hand and blows out the not-there smoke from his middle and index fingers; Richie’s pleasantly indulged.

“I’d love to dance,” Bev chances her reply to Bill once Richie’s done derailing them, and they disappear to the floor.

Mere moments later, a voice calls from behind the remaining Losers. “Well, it’s _about time_ you showed up.”

And just like that, the whole event is pretty much over for Richie. 

Eddie and Ben are walking towards them with a girl between either boy; Richie doesn’t know her, and he could care less. He’s staring at Eddie, and everything is _Eddie_ with his soft poofy hair that curls at the ends - softer and poofier and curlier than usual - with his tucked-in baby blue shirt with the top button undone, neat beige slacks and a worn pair of dark brown loafers. Richie swore he just might faint like a maiden if he so much as saw a _hint_ of a naked ankle. There’s an inhaler-shaped bump protruding from one of Eddie’s pockets. Richie’s fumbling with his glasses, painfully aware of his own staring, fingers practically glued to the frames. 

Then he’s right in front of him and Richie’s pretty sure he forgot how to breathe. The pink-purple lighting of the gymnasium is doing Eddie a solid favor, skin and eyes tinted in a dreamlike rosy color-scape straight out of a romantic fantasy. Eddie’s looking at him a little funny, which he’s not surprised about at all what with how sick he’s been feeling since arriving. Richie feels like he might have to steal Eddie’s inhaler by the end of the night, certainly needing it more than Eddie ever had to. It was going to be a long night. He _has_ to focus on something else, _anything_ else, _immediately_. 

Ben’s wearing the most stereotypical looking prom suit he’s only ever seen in movies, with the sash and pointed dress shoes and coiffed hair and _everything_. There’s a peach-colored ribbon wrapped around his wrist and when Richie points it out, he flushes and mentions his mother having been behind it. It’s the most sickeningly sweetest thing Richie has ever heard that he _has_ to make fun of it. There’s something about mothers on days such as prom that turn them into the mothers you wish they were every single day. Ben lucked out though - he doesn't need to wish. Richie wonders what Mrs Kaspbrak was like for Eddie.

The girl that walked up to the group with them is wearing a turquoise pouf-style dress, and the same dark blue ribbon that was on Stan’s shirt is wrapped in a neat bow around her wrist, daisies weaved around it in entirety. There’s only one person that this could be.

“Wait, _Patty Blum?”_

She raises a shy hand. “The one and only.” 

And Richie was prepared. Was so, _so_ ready to tease Stan and his girl _all night_. But he can’t. She is positively holy. Instead, after a quiet _yowza_ under his breath, Richie turns to hug Stan. Stan, arms hanging awkwardly in the air around Richie, shoots the group a confused smile before tentatively patting at Richie’s back. Patty is next to be embraced; much less wary than Stan, her hug could rival Richie’s own tight bear hugs. When he lets go, Eddie’s naturally the first person his gaze is pulled towards, and something clicks.

Richie, ever the dramatic, gasps loud, a mixture of shock and outrage. His hands grab at Eddie’s head, squishing his cheeks in the process as he slides his thumbs over the smooth skin under his nose and above his lip. 

“What did you— where—” and Eddie smacks his hands away.

“I pulled them out, okay?”

“Pull- _pulled them out?!”_ he sputters and shrieks, the menacing grin that Eddie knows is coming is tugging at Richie’s lips.

“Yes, _pulled_. I wasn’t going to shave off the _seven_ fucking hairs on _one_ _half_ of my face and risk cutting myself. Tweezers, Richie. You should get a pair. It’s like a jungle in there in that nose of yours.”

Richie’s grin grew wider as Eddie prattled on until it popped like a balloon into a bark of a laugh.

“Those seven little hairs were your one and only accomplishment, Eds. Your peak. Your _magnum opus._ I can’t believe you would kill your baby like that… think of the people, Eddie. Why didn’t you think of the people!”

“What people? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Your fans!” Richie thumbs at the skin above Eddie’s lip again, who doesn’t stop him this time.

“And who’s that? Who might those be?”

Eddie’s no-longer-contained little twitch of a smile is felt under Richie’s thumbs, which he now moves to Eddie’s cheeks. Small baby-steps across stepping stones that get more and more perilous the further he crosses this river, the water threatening to slip him up at any moment.

“You don’t know your fans? _Tut tut_ , Eddie… _never_ get into showbiz in the future.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

Neither say anything or make moves to swat hands away in that moment, and Richie’s eyes don’t know what they should be doing anymore. They’re flickering from one spot to the next in rapid flashes, physically unable to remain fixated on Eddie’s face for too long before it starts to burn him. Each risky look an electric shock of consequence, one that he never learns from, because the punishments are worth it if it means he can look again and again and again. Something about flying too close to the sun and risking it all. Richie silently begs Eddie to say something at this point, to shove him away or— _anything_.

He doesn’t, so Richie’s defense mechanism kicks in. He squishes Eddie’s face while making ridiculous expressions of his own in an effort to imitate what he’s doing to Eddie, with little coos of _what a cute boy, what a little handsome cutie, everybody keep your grandmothers indoors because Edward Kaspbrak is out on the town tonight_.

It works like a charm when Eddie groans and rolls his eyes, swats Richie’s hands and arms away and shoves him for good measure, all the while swearing at him - the full package. It’s like Christmas came early.

“That’s Richie, by the way,” Stan asides to Patty, earning the cutest _oh!_ known to mankind. 

Richie fights the urge to show Eddie off; _Oh yeah? You think you’re cute, Blum? You haven’t seen_ this _guy, yet. Check him out,_ and Eddie would lewdly cuss someone out with that sailor mouth of his just for looking at him funny and list every bacterial symptom that has ever existed during a class talent show and try to pour milk through his nose on Stan’s suggestion to cure his lactose intolerance that he absolutely does not have considering he’d just devoured three vanilla cones, and Richie would melt.

But he’s here stag. He has to remember that. He _needs_ to. _(Oh, how he doesn’t want to.)_

The dance proceeds in an orderly fashion: the _official_ first dance once the doors close, a dance-off initiated by the popular kids at the heart of the floor, a song requested by a group of boasty girls who’d show off their planned choreography, then more universally known upbeat dance tracks to fill the night. A gathering nearest to the DJ have begun singing mic-less karaoke, hoping they’re loud enough as a group to be heard over the music, just to be annoying.

Ben is deflated in defeat. He had spotted Bev and Bill on the floor at some point and it devastated him in that way where he hides it with a tiny smile that says _as long as Bev is smiling, then so can I_. Stan and Patty had already left to dance, so it was up to Richie, Mike and Eddie, the three bachelors of the night, to cheer the poor kid up. Richie puffs up and bounces his messy hair with a curled hand like the flirty dame that he is, covering himself with his dad’s oversized jacket as if it were a scandalously tiny dress, slightly bending a knee and looking coy.

“Why, _Mistah Hanscom_ … ya wouldn’t leave such a pretty gal like me _hanging_ now, would ya? _Dance_ with me, Haystack, you _know_ ya want to…” Ben is wholly flustered by it, giggling while spinning Richie around so he doesn’t have to look at him.

Mike and Eddie are making increasingly embarrassing efforts to get Ben to start letting loose by dancing _into_ him, swiping arms and kicking legs and spinning hips into the guy until he has no choice but to join them. They all cheer once he does, and the four of them are a crazed mess getting completely lost to the boogie of _KC & The Sunshine Band. _ At one point Richie tries to get Eddie’s attention by forming an S shape with his arms. The particular vexing song and dance that Richie’s been relentlessly teasing him with isn’t even playing, but Eddie caves anyway and strikes an S back. 

A stunned gasp of delight erupts out of him, Richie grabs onto and frantically shakes Mike’s shoulder while pointing at Eddie, who’s still going at it with wider arms and skipping feet. _That’s it, Mike! That’s it! He did it, the little fucker did it!_ Ben is attempting it too and Eddie’s shaking his head - _no, no, no, that’s wrong, all wrong, it goes like this -_ tugging at his arms to position them for him. Richie gets Mike to start jumping up and down with him on the spot, swiping their palms out into the air all around them in what looks like a strange interpretive dance about karate, which they continued while hopping in orbit around the other two boys. Richie made sure to body Eddie each time he passed him, while Eddie made sure to skip-kick at Richie’s feet in the hopes of tripping him up. There was _nothing_ safe about this dance.

They’re all grabby clinging hands and breathy laughter when the DJ announces that the first slow dance of the evening will be starting soon. Bev and Bill return to their group, and just like that all their efforts for Ben are tossed out the window. _No worries_ , Richie thinks. _I’ll jive all night for the guy if I have to_. As it turns out, he won’t need to because Bev is throwing her arms around Ben, having missed greeting him earlier, and she’s hit with the burst of post-boogie adrenaline that’s running through her. She asks Ben to dance - the _slow dance_ \- and Ben looks like he may just pass out, but he’s nodding fervently, blushing furiously and his hand is shaking as she takes it. She rubs his shoulder to calm him down, grinning bright and warm, and they’re gone.

“D- _don’t_ tell me I missed Eddie’s _Ss-safety Dance_.”

“You missed that and _more_ , Billy,” Eddie huffs out with both hands on his waist as he catches his breath.

Richie cups his hands around his mouth. “Give us an _S-s-s-s-s,_ B-b-b-big Bill!”

Bill starts walking backwards, swinging his arms into the requested sharp S-shaped dance pose with two middle fingers on both hands aimed with love at Richie, before he executes a smooth one-eighty spin that makes the back flaps of his suit jacket fly up. Eddie’s eyes glitter at the display with raised brows and a quiet _wow_ muttered under his breath that somehow sounds both sarcastic and like it truly might’ve been the coolest thing he’d ever seen. Bill is at the refreshments table for a speedy minute before he’s sliding his way back to the group with a tray of much-needed drinks. Show-off.

The first slow dance begins.

“Well _this_ is lame,” Richie says after gulping half his cup of punch down, wishing it was spiked. “Nobody fucking laugh, but I want that,” he gestures to all the couples swaying slowly with heads on shoulders. The adrenaline, the sugar, the sickly sweetness - it’s all getting to him a little. “Bill, give me your shoulder. Eddie’s too short.”

Richie’s already dropping his head into the crook of Bill’s shoulder before any of them can protest. He’s not exactly in an embrace like the dancing couples are, but he’s settled into Bill’s side as close as he can. And sure, Bill’s the perfect height with the perfect shoulders and the perfect suit with the perfect voice and air about him, but it’s not the kind of perfection that fulfils or completes or one seeks - it overtakes.

It’s the kind of perfection one feels brief contentment with when you find a puzzle piece that just so happens to fit perfectly into a spot on an entirely different puzzle by sheer coincidence and chance alone, but the reality then being that neither of the puzzles would ever be complete. It is a brief noteworthy perfection that one doesn’t wish to revel in too long - a fleeting _oh! well isn’t that something!_ then it stops being perfect. Because Bill Denbrough is _not_ perfect. What’s _truly_ perfect is the unparalleled satisfaction and fulfilment one feels for a properly complete perfect picture - the final puzzle image you worked so hard for. 

Richie’s love for Bill and his perfection takes over Richie entirely, leaving little room for Richie himself. But a small and scrawny, brash and unpredictable, loud and foulmouthed, terrified and Derry-drifting Eddie leaves Richie-shaped molds in his very being that Richie can naturally pour himself into, just as Eddie poured into his. Eddie’s perfection lies in the fact that he _isn’t_ Bill Denbrough - a tangible and grounded perfection that completes and balances their dynamic since the very first day they met.

The fact of the matter is, is that Richie _knows_ they’re soulmates, be it romantic or not, but he crushes himself with the selfish taboo of wanting _more_. That _what-if_ intrusive thought that perhaps Eddie, as he is and as _they_ are, is not _complete_ , not at their fullest potential; a thousand-piece puzzle with two missing from the box. Pieces they each stole in secret and purposely hid somewhere the other could never find, yet stubbornly, _desperately,_ wanting each other to. 

They’re thoughts and wishes that Richie is adamant on taking to his grave. It goes like this: Richie doesn’t dare allow himself to entertain his truth, to which he’s both deemed it a threat to Eddie _and_ Eddie a threat to, so he’ll push and push and push away for as long as he is able to, to safe and delicate distances, but, _man_ , it's a little embarrassing sometimes how desperate he is for Eddie to make that first move.

And he _knows_ he’s watching Eddie closely from Bill’s shoulder, an ironic and quiet longing for something he knows he can accomplish with ease. If he’d draped himself over Eddie right now, there’d be no question, no issue, no strangeness to it… _and yet_. It’s the danger that comes with picking truth during _Truth or Dare_ disguised as a dare itself - a cruel trick played on him by his own safety net.

A trio of girls walk up to them then, shy and giggling and clutching at each other’s arms - the genuine kind that comes with being rendered a gooey mess after seeing a really beautiful person. One of them asks Mike if he wants to dance, and he’s rendered speechless. All of them are, really. Bill swings an emboldening hand against his shoulder and Mike speedily accepts the offer, his eager excitement for a new experience speaking for him before his humble and modest nature can catch up with the situation and decline.

“I _actually_ attend this school,” Richie blurts out, standing up straight with his arms dumb at his sides, “and yet _I’m_ the one stuck in the sidelines.”

“Class c-clown versus a _handsome mysterious stranger_ … it's a p-pretty ss-straightforward choice,” Bill claps Richie on the back.

“I told you, Rich. No one in their right mind would take you to prom,” Eddie smirks beside him. 

“Y’know, you’re not exactly racking up invitations yourself there either, Eds.” 

“It’s because they haven’t _actually_ played _Safety Dance_ , yet,” Eddie says, preemptively rolling his eyes with a knowing smile as Richie bursts out laughing. 

Richie _wants_ to say the initial shock of witnessing Eddie at prom has worn off but… well. It’s just not possible. Richie drapes an arm around Eddie’s shoulders, because he can, and because he wants to, and _thoughts-be-damned_ as he starts swaying them side-by-side along to the slow ballad. _Making Love Out Of Nothing At All._ Air Supply. He’ll take what he can get.

If Eddie is the cat killed by curiosity, then Richie’s waxen wings melt in the punishing heat of the sun he flies towards, and plummets to his death. 

He’s belting out the chorus with an intensity he didn’t even know was in him. It’s even better when Bill and Eddie join in, and they’re the saddest looking trio in the entire gymnasium, singing into their empty soda and punch cups with fists curled in passion and eyes shut so tightly that a few tears _may_ have squeezed out.

When the next slow song fades in, Eddie moves to drop his empty cup into Richie’s, then places them on the nearby table. Eddie’s arm snakes back around his lower back while Richie’s is still limp around his shoulders, and he motions them into a slow spin on the spot as they sway to the tempo, a spin that leaves their sides tucked into one another, melded together, almost, _almost_ front-to-front. It’s truly maddening. 

Richie chuckles, hums, to the brim with nerves, glancing around from Eddie to Bill to the rest of the gym where he expected all eyes to be suddenly on him. They’re not, not a single eye is, and yet he still feels completely naked and exposed. In a panic, he lets go of Eddie’s shoulder, because he _needs_ to, and pulls away. Just a bit, though - too far from Eddie is just as bad as too close. He pretends not to notice Eddie’s peeved frown. 

Bill is just drinking soda. The asshole is just drinking soda. Does he have _any_ idea?

Richie can drink soda too. He fills his cup and moves to sit down on one of the benches, suddenly feeling a weighty overwhelming pull in his legs.

“Weirdo,” is all Eddie mutters as he moves to stand next to Bill. 

_Homewrecker, homewrecker, homewrecker._ Clearly _Bill_ is the problem, and not _Richie_ , is what he tries to persuade himself of. He’s watching Bill and Eddie talk as they take up the same closeness he had with Eddie just seconds ago; all draping arms and swaying and singing into their cups. But they’re also talking, muttering, mumbling, and it infuriates him to no end. He stubbornly sips at his refilled soda. It’s not even good soda. 

Richie is currently in attendance of multiple proms: one where his fear and truth are dancing their own fiery dance battle, one where his heart and mind are locking eyes from across the floor, too shy to meet in the middle, and the one with him sat pathetically on the sidelines after pushing Eddie away for the thousandth time.

He can’t take another slow ballad, but the damn things just keep on coming, a battering ram in his mind threatening to release its imprisoned contents. He searches the crowd of bodies for any of the other Losers. Bev’s fiery curls are a burning flame in the ocean of blondes and brunettes: her head is on Ben’s shoulder and as they pivot he eventually sees Ben’s blissful little bashful smile. _Good for them_ , he thinks. Call Richie a romantic, but he likes to think he knows soulmates when he sees them. It’s a gift. Or a curse. Or complete bullshit. 

Stan and Patty are dancing near Ben and Bev, sticking together even in the sea of strangers, so he expects Mike and his mystery girl are also closeby. Speaking of soulmates, Stan and Patty look practically married, like this isn’t actually prom but their wedding reception. Richie considers using the sheet from the refreshments table as a chuppah. They can’t keep their eyes off of each other, and Stan looks so stupidly smitten that Richie makes a mental note to mercilessly bring it up later.

Mike and his girl are talking away, and his _Honey Sweet Hanlon Smile_ is the brightest it’s ever been, very much like the time he told them about travelling to Florida someday. It’s clear there’s nothing blossoming there between them, but it’s amicable enough to remain enjoyable and for more than one dance. 

There’s another group that catches his eye. Another group of Losers just like them, together as a unit but paired off for the slow dance, talking over their shoulders and all-around at each other. There are two boys dancing together, and two girls, and they’re switching partners around like it’s a joke. They’re being touchy and pretend-romantic and Richie bitterly wonders if he’d be able to pull something like that off. All he can think of, however, is the arcade - a pretty little scene with a bit of pretending here, a little bit of a joking touch there, until it’s no longer a joke. A constant reminder, a permanent _stain_ on his heart and mind. Richie’s ripped out of his thoughts when Eddie sits next to him.

“What’s up?”

 _I don’t know_.

“The sky.”

Eddie looks up and frowns. “Eh, not quite.” 

Richie looks up as well then scoffs at the gym ceiling. “Where’s Bill?”

“Bathroom.”

Richie nods slowly, as does Eddie. He puts his cup on the floor by the bench while Eddie fiddles with his own fingers. Suddenly it’s like they’re sat on the curb again.

Richie blows air out of his nose and smiles. “This is lame.”

Eddie smiles too. “Yeah, it is.”

“So…” Richie starts. “Prom, marry, kill - me, Patty, Bill.”

“ _Patty?!_ ” Eddie’s face is twisted, a taken aback half-frown accompanying that great unbelievable smile of his. Richie’s really warm.

“This one shouldn’t be difficult for you at all.”

Eddie reels back a little. “What the fuck is _that_ supposed to mean?”

“What? It doesn’t mean anything! M’just assuming it’s gonna be pretty... straight-forward.” _Hilarious, Richie. You should be a comedian._

“What do you think I’m gonna say then?”

“Kill me, _obviously,_ ”

“ _Obviously._ ”

“Take Bill to prom, and marry Patty.”

“Hm.” Eddie purses his lips, observing Richie intently.

“Am I right?”

“You assume too much.”

“Okay? Humor me, then. What’s the real answer?”

Eddie turns to watch the masses dancing with a distant look. “You.”

Richie stares, furrowing and unfurrowing his brows.

“Me?”

“Yeah. You to all three.”

Richie swallows. Defense mechanism time. 

“What the fuck?” He breathes out an unsure chuckle. “Should… should I be alarmed? How does that play out, exactly…? You take me as a date to prom, make me fall madly in love with you, we get married, then once you’ve succeeded in the long-con, you brutally murder me in the comfort of your own home?”

“I mean it’d be _our_ home at that point,” Eddie blows air out of his nose. “But yeah, something like that.”

Richie’s hands are sweaty, heart on the verge of bursting out of his chest. He really can’t handle this boy, sometimes. He wonders if Eddie’s even aware. If he _Knows_. With a capital K. He doesn’t know if he could handle that possibility either. He picks at a fingernail.

“Sounds…” Richie clears his throat. “Sounds good. Fun. Looking forward to it.”

They both spot Bill re-entering the gymnasium on the other side of the room, where he’s immediately stopped by a particularly large group of about eight. A girl from the front is talking to him, and he looks flustered and sheepish before shrugging, then the pair of them join the dancefloor.

“Wow,” Richie remarks. “ _And then there were two._ ”

“Somehow, I’m not surprised. Like, at all.”

Richie snorts, then bumps a shoulder into Eddie. He bumps him back. It’s unbearable. Richie rubs his palms against the fabric of his pants.

“Wait a minute… hey. _Hey._ What the fuck? Are we matching? Are we fucking _matching_ , Eds?”

“ _Huh?_ What the fuck are you—” and Eddie turns vacant when he looks down.

Richie presses their forearms together - sandy brown moth-eaten tweed against sleek baby blue cotton - then their knees - baby blue against sandy beige. Eddie’s processing. Richie’s in a state of rapture.

“That’s… _no_. No.” Eddie’s shaking his head. “We’re not matching. No way. Nuh-uh. We’re _not_ —” he grips Richie’s obscene and repulsively bright orange tie with a sharp tug. “What the fuck is this? _Are_ we matching? Are we fucking matching? What the hell is this, Richie? It’s disgusting.”

“Woah, hey man, don’t knock the dig. It’s all about _style_ , dude.”

“Sty- _style?!”_ Eddie shrieks out a laugh then drops his head in his hands. “Oh my God, we’re matching.”

“Hey, Eds… look at me…”

In the split second that he does, Richie takes advantage and throws the now untied tie over Eddie’s head and around his neck. He’s frantically tying it into a bow knot once Eddie comprehends what he’s doing and starts fighting back, worming his way out of the proximity.

“Get that fucking thing away from me!” Eddie’s shriek is delightful.

“Stop moving! It’s your corsage! You need a corsage!”

“Then tie it around my wrist, you dickhead!” Eddie shoves a palm against Richie’s mouth, successfully tilting his head backwards.

“Wait— _can_ I—?”

“Give me _that_ ,” Eddie snatches the tie out of Richie’s hold, grips tight around his wrist and tugs the hand over his lap.

He slides the tie under the wrist and wraps neatly around about three times. Richie watches the process for a flash before he decides that Eddie’s frazzled yet concentrated face is much more interesting to watch instead. His lips are pulled in with a fixed knot between his brows. He carefully loops both ends of the tie, twisting them together and through the knot to form a perfect looking bow - the kind you see on the tops of stock footage Christmas presents during holiday advertisements. Richie tilts his head in a lopsided manner at Eddie when he fiddles with the ends as a finishing touch so they fall tidily on either side of his wrist.

“There. _Your_ ugly tie, _your_ ugly corsage.”

“Not a corsage _yet_. This thing needs a flower in it, Eddie,” he taps at his own nose like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“Okay, wait here, I’ll go rip out some grass outside.”

Richie shrills a delightful bark of a laugh, dropping a hand atop Eddie’s to keep him there, just in case he was actually being serious about it. Eddie curls a fist against his cheek and rests his weight on his elbow, head tilted sideways with a coy little smile. 

“ _My, my,_ Eddie - matching outfits, a _daaahr-ling_ corsage - I _dare say_ we’re _quite_ _the_ _item!”_

“Quite, quite. Indeed,” Eddie remarks in monotone. 

“Oh, _Kaspbrak, old chap._ You _indulge_ me.”

“Richie…” Eddie sighs, and it’s terribly frustrated. He looks like he wants to say something but doesn’t know how. Richie’s certainly been there. He drops the act.

“What is it?”

“ _Jesus_ — I mean… it’s really not a big fucking deal, I… right? Like, I mean, we’ve _danced_ before,” he’s gesturing wildly with his hands. Richie fiddles with his glasses again. “Why does it have to be weird _now?_ ”

“Uh, you know why, Eds,” Richie huffs a hollow laugh.

In the eyes of Derry, nothing goes unquestioned and unchecked, innocent or not, and with age, the shame and boundaries grow with them. It’s something they _all_ know and have no reason to talk about. The same shroud that prevents teenage boys from feeling and crying, holds a grip over their hands every time they inch and urge to hold one another for much needed and sought-after comfort. An untouchable and invisible demon that could rival a sewer clown feeding off of fear and innocence. 

“It’s annoying. There are worse fucking things to happen.”

Something squeezes Richie’s heart. Some sort of tiny sense of hope that they’re on the same page that managed to sneak through a crack in his walls. Only God knows what will happen now that it’s loose.

“You know, you told me you got banned from the arcade.”

“I mean, not _really_. Pretty sure I said _something like that_.”

“Okay, great, thanks _Professor Linguistics_. Care to explain?”

Richie swallows nothing, his throat completely dry at this point. He shouldn’t, he doesn’t want to, but that tiny little infiltrating hope tells him he _can_.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he breathes out, and it’s shaky. He doesn’t even realise he’d said it out loud. 

Eddie watches him with worry knotted between his brows. He doesn’t say _nevermind_ or _forget it_ though, because he wants to know, _needs_ to know, and Richie knows he owes him the explanation. He places a hand on Richie’s shoulder instead.

“If you really think whatever you tell me is going to be _so outrageous_ that I’ll hate you forever, then you’re a real fucking idiot. _And_ real fucking rude. We’re best friends, right?” Richie doesn’t answer. “ _Am I right?_ ” Richie nods curtly.

He looks to Eddie, opens his mouth to say _something_ , but only a shaky, breathy laugh comes out instead.

“Dude, I don’t know, I just don’t know if I _can_.”

“Tell me,” Eddie insists, and it’s pleading and intense in a way that hooks Richie in and he knows he’s doomed. 

He knows his eyes flutter to Eddie’s mouth for a ghost of a second, he _knows_ , and he hates it. These stupid emotional slow ballads just keep on coming, disenfranchising and transporting him to a better, braver scenario - one where they’re the protagonists of a film with a guaranteed happy ending no matter what. One where he can stare and _know_ and be stared back at and _be_ _known_. No repercussion. No guilt. No stain, but the stain of Eddie’s touch that he’ll never need to scrub clean again.

“Fine,” Richie’s focus is on the orange bow around his wrist and only that. He curls a finger through one of the loops. “It was… _that_ summer. You broke your arm and when you left we all had that argument. I think we told you, right?” Eddie nods. “Right, so we just did our own shit for a while. I barely saw anyone, except for Stan who just kinda needed someone to rant to about… _whatever_.”

“ _I_ could’ve fucking used someone to rant to about _whatever_ too,” Eddie eggs him on.

Richie’s prolonging it, and he knows it.

“I was at the arcade, you know, the usual. Street Fighter. Some kid shows up, starts watching me kick ass, asks to join me, and I’m, you know, lonely and bored out of my mind so, _of course._ We’re at it for what feels like hours, right, then he’s out of tokens, has to leave, so I whip one out for him because I really want to keep playing. And… and I guess I’m really desperate or something, because he starts looking around, sees Bowers, and snaps. _Why’re you being weird_ ,” he mock-imitates the boy. “ _I’m not your fucking boyfriend._

“Bowers’ gang is there, they see and hear it all, cherry on the cake is this guy is Bowers’ _cousin_ or something, just my fucking luck, and, well, you can guess what happened. I pretty much never want to step foot in that place alone ever again,” he finishes with a dry laugh.

“What the hell?” Eddie snaps. “You were literally just playing a game. Is playing fucking arcade games _gay_ now? Un-fucking-believable.”

Eddie’s biting remarks are a welcome sound, and Richie wants to snort, laugh, huff air out of his nose, _something_ , but he doesn’t have it in him. He doesn’t really know what he expected from Eddie, if he even had any expectations. Recalling the memory out loud, it truly doesn’t hold nearly as much of the implications as he himself believed it did. But that’s not the point. Because Richie _knows_ that every implication is true - every comment, regard, slur - it was all true. He’s not sure if Eddie picked up on it. Or if he did, if he understands the gravity of it - how much of a not-a-joke it is. Doesn’t want to know. The g-word is a laceration coming from Eddie’s mouth. 

When he doesn’t say anything, Eddie peeps a glance his way. Richie’s shoulders are tightly raised, wound-up, his palms between his thighs, leg bouncing, eyes staring at something _really fucking interesting on the floor_ \- there’s clearly something heavy and weighted to the story that holds more to it than just wanting to play a game at the arcade.

Eddie knows.

Eddie knows a lot of things. He’d pride himself on it, to always have something intelligent tucked away in his sleeves. He had learned recently that all of those things he once thought were important to know, weren’t, in fact, at all. So what remained of Eddie’s tidbits of knowledge? His sole fixation used to be on the causes: a symptom for everything, a symptom that explained the whys, whats and hows of anything new and unusual. Now, that no longer mattered. It was the _effect_ that mattered. The _aftermath_. How to _live_ with certain symptoms. What comes _next_. The new and the unusual and the _experience_ of it. It is the kind of knowledge that he doesn’t need to _know_ and be aware of all the time, something that can sit dormant in the back of his mind as a passenger, instead of piloting him at the forefront. It’s the most beloved kind of freedom the Losers helped him grant himself.

But this, Eddie knows it exactly. In every possible way he was able to know: articles and research and study and media and a leper and a disease and his _mother and_ — and a best friend. So he’s stuck. Stuck in the predicament of consoling his best friend at the risk of revealing something of his own. Something that he’s been fervently trying to lock away, kill, extract, heal, _cure_. But it’s not something you _can_ cure, because the very moment he recognises it in Richie, he realises it’s not something _to_ cure. Richie isn’t any lesser to him, isn’t any sicker or more diabolical.

_Do you really think there’s something wrong with me, Dr K?_

And in Richie’s case, Eddie thinks he has the answers now. But he wants them for himself too, wants his own _Dr K_ to confide in. When Richie is sick with cold and flu, all he needs is a glass of hot milk with honey and garlic and he’s on his feet by the next morning. When Eddie is sick with cold and flu, he’s out of commission for at least a week even with every remedy and medication he’s given. Then, when he’s better, his mother forces him to stay a week longer. _Just in case_ , she always says. _Just to be safe._

“Are you… do you… _you know_ _?_ ” Eddie tries, and he needs to know, needs to hear the clear-cut words as they’re meant to be said.

“What are you asking, Eddie? If I _like boys?_ If I’m _dirty?_ And _weird?_ And a fucking _queer?”_ He spits, but it’s quiet and scared; Tail between his legs, backed up against a wall. He’s thankful for the loud music.

“I’m asking _one_ of those things. You know what I’m asking.”

“Well… then, _yeah_ ,” and Richie’s holding his breath, refusing to breathe from this point onward. It’s not relieving, not like he thought it’d be. There’s no relieving exhale, no lightness in laying the truth out bare, no cathartic laughter at the outcome of it all. If he has to blackout at this prom then he will. And what a fucking prom it’s turning out to be.

Eddie, on the other hand, exhales, long and deliberate, like he’s the much-needed exhale to Richie’s inhale. A helpful declaration in exchange for a helpful breath. His friend’s affirmation acts as the one relieving medication he’s been seeking all his life that _isn’t_ , in fact, a placebo. A master key for every room holding every possible thing that’s wrong with him, opening every door and letting the rooms finally, _finally,_ air out.

Puzzle piece nine-nine-nine has been put into place. If anyone deserves the last, final, thousandth piece, it’s Richie. He owes it to him.

Eddie nods, once, twice, slow and thoughtful. He’s got a list of pros and cons in his head, and he goes over it about a dozen times. Then he scraps it entirely, because it doesn’t matter. He’s lost, distant, _unsure._ A game of tennis - a back-and-forth between the delicate Eddie on puppet strings and the brave Eddie he’s had many intoxicating tastes of already. Small acts of rebellion that are akin to kicking the face of an eldritch demonic clown from space. 

It’s the pebbles rocking on his window, a vibrating Richie-shaped bubble of life stepping through the bars of his cage and leaving him a secret means to break out with. It’s the eye rolls and comfortable fond silence of six pairs of eyes he could never turn or shy away from. It’s the six pairs of hands in a circle around him who bled with and for him. It’s the six pills he needs to take daily that lay strewn about in the dirt instead of his body. It’s the five letters with a red V in the middle of his own making, stark and searing red hot against the murky black of reality. The _V_ of vitality, of youth, of hope, and of _Love_.

“What do you… what do you think…?” Richie’s asking and not asking. Eddie’s been silent and it’s been a little more than unbearable for him. 

“I think you’re the best fucking thing in this entire damn town, Rich,” he blurts out, with that little knot between his brows and a flush that’s visible even under all the pink lighting of room. “I think… I think,” he stands and balls his fists at his sides. “I think we should go to the others, and join them, because I really, _really_ want to fucking dance with you at this stupid fucking prom.”

“You… you don’t have to do that. Whatever you’re doing. Whatever this is.”

Eddie pulls him up off the bench, a vice grip around Richie’s hand. “I’m not doing anything.” He’s got a determined glint in his eye, one that Richie knows is built on a wobbly foundation of shaky, shaky legs. He’s scared too. Terrified.

“Eddie, what are you… what do you… what’s happening?” Richie looks around, like it’s a prank, some sort of sick joke by his friends, and he’s about to get humiliated out of nowhere. Again.

Eddie exhales the longest and heaviest exhale of maybe his entire life. He has no clue how or why he has the upper hand in the situation. Richie’s the cocksure one. The bold and brash and reckless one. The act-first-ask-questions-later one. _Just say something stupid. Please. Something about my mom. Something about dicks. Something about me._ Eddie takes hold of his other hand and clutches them both with what he hopes comes across as his own version of the safe security he wanted so badly to believe in once upon a time. The one his mother made up to keep him just the way she wanted. The one _he_ forged and built with his true and tried love and bravery.

_It’s not a joke. Cards on the table._

“I don’t think you’re ever going to say it, but I need you to say it so _I_ can say it. Do you understand?” Eddie pauses, waits, for _something_ , but Richie’s paralysed through-and-through. Eddie swallows. “What’s happening is that I want to dance. With you. At prom. Like everyone else is. Richie, I’ve been holding your sweaty hands for a good while now, and _look_ how much it doesn’t matter,” he nods towards the dancing crowd, who for _once_ , on this _one god-damned day_ , have more important things to think about than two boys holding hands. “And — and if we _do_ get bullied out of here, then I want to go somewhere else, I don’t care where, and I want to dance more there.” He pulls his lips inwards when he’s done, looking anywhere but Richie.

“What,” Richie croaks out, “What do you need me to say?” 

Eddie huffs out a disbelieving laugh. Richie’s a dumbfounded deer in the headlights.

“I mean, we— we’re _weird_. Right? We do a lot of shit that we probably shouldn’t, but we— it’s… it’s all a stupid fucking excuse. Because we _want_ to. I… _I_ want to. So do you. Right? Do you? Do you want to? You _know_ what I’m talking about.”

“Eddie, I… full disclosure? I don’t think I can go out there after something like this,” his laugh is all atremble, all breath, all _shaky, shaky_ breath. 

“Then don’t _think_. Stop _thinking_. You think way too fucking much, Rich.”

“In this town, I kind of have to.”

“Then we dance as a joke. Laugh it off. Do what you do best, make a whole fucking scene of it. But when we’re alone, or with our friends, we can just… we don’t have to think. You don’t have to think. Just be… irritating, and annoying, and not funny and gross and stupid and annoying- _already said that_ \- _cocky_ and- and _big-headed_ , and a stupidly unbelievable know-it-all and— the weird, ridiculous, fantastic, _brilliant_ Loser you are.”

Eddie’s heavy breathing is causing his entire body to rise and fall on the balls of his feet, his face is terribly twisted and flushed, nose flaring in that comical way Richie adores _so, so_ much. Richie’s going to be sick. His gut feels bloated, ribcage loaded - cramped and intoxicated - mere moments from critical explosion. For someone who gags on the daily, Eddie has never once in his life actually thrown up, so Richie’s convinced they all somehow pass onto him. There’s a joke in there somewhere, something like how for every time Eddie gags, Richie romantically finishes his ‘sentences’, so-to-speak, by physically hurling.

It’s weird. Things are weird. Richie hates it, despite how much he’s positively bursting at the seams. He’s hit with the realisation that there really is no going back now, that this… this _thing_... that it’s either _something_ , or their friendship will never be the same, permanently broken and spoiled by unsolicited feelings the world wants to tear out of him. He can’t decide which scenario is more terrifying. But maybe Eddie’s right. Maybe he doesn’t have to think, doesn’t have to decide _anything_ , doesn’t have to _realise_ anything. Something he never thought would happen in a million years _did_ happen. So, maybe, _maybe_ , some of the other impossible things he thinks will never, ever happen, are, in fact, possible. 

Eddie tugs on his fingers once, twice, a subtle little motivating incentive, and Richie nods. Nods, because it’s _Eddie_. Because he’s long since already answered this question that the both of them have been asking, an answer he carved with a pocket knife. He nods and lets Eddie walk him over to where the Losers are dancing, their tame link of thumbs hooked around fingers a secret tucked away between them, loosely hidden under a curtain of brown tweed. 

The Losers are all paired up but still moving as a unit, and there’s something safe about it that Richie wills himself to relax. Their eyes light up at the boys’ arrival, but then there’s a peculiarity in them, curious and knowing and hopeful all at once. The same kind of eyes they traded amongst one another after their blood pact; silent, telepathic understanding.

“Bored?” Stan quirks his lips.

The teasing was going to be relentless. But that’s just the thing - they’ll take it. Richie and Eddie will take it in a heartbeat if it means they get to just be _them,_ as they are, with all the little benefits that come with this scary, very scary, not scary at all little _thing_ of theirs. And besides, this was _Richie_ and _Eddie_ : they _invented_ being mercilessly annoying and relentlessly teasing. Richie and Eddie alone were one thing, together another, but _together_ together? It will not even be one full day before the gang start begging them for mercy. 

Eddie ignores Stan and turns on his heel to place his hands gingerly at Richie’s sides, touching and hovering, touching and hovering. Richie’s got a case of cold feet, apprehensive in any attempt to touch. It’s a sooty boulder of coal lodged deep in his gut that he just can’t quite seem to crack. He hovers up Eddie’s forearms, rigidly patting the fabric of his shirt along the way until he settles on a sheepish grip of his shoulders. They start to sway, slow, and painfully lumbering. It’s not like how they swayed together earlier, which is precisely what Richie feared: that loss of comfort and ease that came naturally between them. 

It was Richie now who was backed into a state of delicate fragility and desperately needed the Losers’ bravery. _Eddie’s_ bravery.

“No one fucking say anything,” Eddie snaps at them all. Richie’s knees may give out.

“What if I switched and danced with Bill? What do you think? That could be good,” Mike suggests. “Bill! Partner up?” he calls over the pair before either could respond, not that they actually _could,_ anyhow. Bill glances at his dance partner and Mike flashes an apologetic smile to his own, “That would be… would be fine?” She ponders briefly, looking over at the girl Bill is dancing with and shoots both her and Mike a smile with a happy shrug.

The exchange takes place and the two new dancing pairs remain in the circle around Richie and Eddie, who, really, could care less about the new development. Eddie’s making more pros and cons lists, more mathematic calculations providing data and statistics to make safe conclusions with, and it’s loud enough in his head that it breaches into Richie’s own. Are they now the very innocent image of a passing ironic joke, or have they tripled the attention of scornful onlookers? Which was worse? The girls spin each other at the same time as Mike spins Bill with a comfortable ease that Richie can’t help but feel taunted by, the familiar backed-against-a-wall anger revving its engine in his gut. Why are he and Eddie still paralysed in each others’ grip?

 _And if by some chance you decide to break my heart behind my back and dance with strange girls, then the least you can do is leave room for Jesus,_ was what Eddie’s distraught mother had told him in a mess of tears, while he, half-way out of the front door, stood frozen in guilt. Eddie isn’t leaving room for Jesus between them; he’s leaving room for Sonia herself.

Richie, on the other hand, is leaving room for a ghost of himself. A ghost with dead grey skin, threaded lips sewn into silence and maggots crawling out of those pale milky white eyes blinded by unwanted visions. It stares back at him, judging and belittling, and all he can do is try to pierce through its translucency and will it away to reach Eddie, looking as pale and terrified as his ghost did.

“Look, Eds, we—”

“Shut up. Let me think.”

Richie can’t help the grin, and it’s painful on his skin. “I thought you said we _shouldn’t_ think.”

“I know what I said,” he snaps.

Stan and Patty spin purposefully to get close to Eddie. “Unclench,” Stan remarks into his ear before disappearing somewhere behind him. 

“I’m _thinking_ ,” he hisses at nobody in particular.

He’s emanating heat and raised hairs and a buzz all over his body that he’s begging to neutralise. It’s a game of _Hot Potato_ and Richie’s curled fists gripped atop his shoulders are the scalding root vegetables burning through his thin shirt. He fixates on Richie’s wreck of a jacket. 

“You look really dumb,” he mumbles stupidly at it. 

It may be old and worn and moth-eaten, a cluttered eyesore like Richie is, but it’s still terribly un-Richie-like it leaves an uncomfortable aftertaste on his eyes. There’s this clean and clinical formality to it that he never sees other than on the rare occasion he accompanies him to Sunday mass, or at his family’s Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners purposely moved a day earlier or later to accommodate Eddie so he wouldn’t get in trouble for missing the _“official”_ days with his mother, or Stan’s Bar Mitzvah - Eddie still curses his mother to this day for keeping him locked away and missing it.

“Jeez,” Richie huffs. “First the tie, now the jacket… you’re going to make my dad cry.”

Richie doesn’t want to make a scene of this, as Eddie suggested. He doesn’t want to laugh it off, doesn’t want it to be a joke. So he doesn’t, and slinks his hands from Eddie’s shoulders closer to his neck, the orange tie on his wrist brushing by his ear. It earns him a sharp inhale, and Richie’s desperate to get even closer. If this is a dream, or some sick joke, or a warped reality where he’ll look over and see a red balloon and _realise_ , he wants to milk the moment regardless. He’s willing to give in to the whims of _It_ , certain in his sudden decision that his fear and heartbreak is worth this brief fleeting moment of blissful unreality and falsehood. Eddie slides to grip the back of his dumb-looking jacket like a lifeline, and Richie knows his moment of bravery is over.

_Bill, Stan, Richie, and Eddie loiter in a circle near the benches, shouting at each other over the loud music in an effort to hold a conversation._

_“That’s what I’m saying, dude, say b-b-b-bye-bye to your childhood, Bill. Mom wanted me to have a sister so bad but thank God my dad persuaded her against it, eugh.”_

_Bill scoffs at Richie, “It won’t b-be like th-that. Mm-maybe I d-d-don’t care, that he’s the fav-favorite now.”_

_“Stage one of grief, Bill,” Eddie lifts a finger while he hops casually from foot-to-foot to the beat._

_“Wouldn’t it be stage three?” Stan raises an eyebrow. Eddie shoots him a challenging glare._

_“Think of it this way,” Richie claps Bill on the shoulder. “You can do whatever you want now. Like me! Your parents won’t care!” and he says it in such innocence like it’s the best thing in the world, like he’s the luckiest kid in all of Derry._

_“Georgie’s fucking awesome, anyway,” Eddie shimmies into Stan on his left then into Richie on his right. Richie claps his other hand onto Eddie’s shoulder then starts pushing himself up off of both him and Bill with small hops and mid-air kicks._

_“Yeah, Georgie rules. Remember last week when he found that snail and put it in your bag, and you didn’t realise until the next day when you had to turn in your slimy math worksheet with that dead snail all over it?”_

_“Ugh, I got fucking detention for that!” Richie whines over their snickering. “But it_ was _pretty damn funny…”_

_“Okay, okay, let’s d-drop this b-before Georgie hear-hears it and it goes to- to his head.”_

_“Yeah, guys! This is a dance, we should be dancing. Why aren’t we dancing? Show me those moves, Spaghetti.”_

_He grabs one of Eddie’s hands before he can protest and extends their arms to the side, earning a shriek from the smaller boy, and swings them into a closed dance position with his other hand passing under Eddie’s arm, almost lifting him off his feet from the force of his pull. Eddie iron-grips Richie’s shoulder from fear of being flung across the room if he lets go, but then he’s grinning and bubbling with laughter while they perform what looks like a fast-paced messy caricature of a half-waltz-half-jive around Bill and Stan._

_Richie spins him under his arm then they swap partners: Richie jiving with a horrified Stan while the other two spin rapidly around, Eddie’s sole intent being to let go and launch Bill in Richie’s direction to bodyslam him. Sensing this from miles away, Bill acts quick and launches Eddie first with complete ease, who’s caught by Stan and Richie who both pick him up while he alternates between flipping Bill off and smacking at their heads, demanding to be put down._

_After accidentally knocking a few heads together during the shenanigans, Richie’s wrapped completely around Eddie, patting and stroking at his hair where it hurt, tucking him under his chin, cooing and blubbering little nothings like an overbearing grandmother would. Eddie didn’t even feel any pain; He simply made a huge deal out of an otherwise tame situation, as he tends to do, and is now paying the ultimate price of being tucked away and trapped in Richie’s terrible, horrible, awful, embrace. He sways them, shuffling from one foot to the other, an unspoken agreement of_ ‘my head still hurts, and it’s your fault, so you have to keep making it better’ _settling between them._

Eddie pushes them closer together, dropping his head into Richie’s shoulder. He doesn’t want to look at anything right now. They move in a snail-paced pivot while the others dance around them like a protective shield. It’s welcome and safe - safe in a way that Eddie can get behind, on his own terms. And it’s cheesy, so terribly cheesy, with Christopher Cross’ _Sailing_ gently serenading the room around them, but it’s also kind of perfect. Better than perfect.

It’s _too_ perfect.

A perfect that Richie can’t delve into for too long for fear of losing the protective barrier between his thoughts and his reality. The shield of the surrounding Losers disappears when he looks around over Eddie’s head and is instead met with hundreds of blank empty eyes boring into him, a bait that reels his guilt and shame to the surface. 

Richie makes a scene.

He nudges and pushes away from Eddie. _He’s not ten years old anymore_. He hears the springs and thwacks and dings of a distant pinball machine, tapping buttons and heroic catchphrases and kicks and punches and a jingle of dispensing tokens. _It’s not a joke anymore_.

His fear and heartbreak _were_ a willing sacrifice until it hit him like a sack of bricks that, actually, he could _not_ bear the idea of those deeply inquisitive brown eyes turning a sickly gold. He needs to breathe. Or hurl. Richie shoves past Eddie, contacting their shoulders as he tears through the barrier of Losers, and exits the gym before the inverted triangle of balloons can pop in his mind.

Eddie’s frozen, and he selfishly wonders how many more times Richie will run away, how many more times he’ll have to keep chasing him. He’s hesitant, though. Standing here in the middle of the floor alone and surrounded by the minefield of paired dancers, he feels terribly small. Does Richie even want him to run after him? It’s a stupid question, of course, and he knows it - Richie and the Losers have been building racetracks for him from the very moment they learned his name. What else was this but another racetrack for him to run? _Run, then_.

_Run, Eddie, Run._

“Eddie? Where’d—”

“I’m leaving,” he blurts out to the floor. “I’m going home.”

When Bill and Bev move to follow him, Stan holds them back by their arms with a slight shake of his head. 

“They’re not going home.”

Exiting the doors, Eddie scans the area. The stark and clinical white street lamps are sobering to his dazed eyes still swimming in pink and purple fuzz. As expected, Richie is sitting on one of the short steps leading down into the almost-empty parking lot, a secluded spot by the tall red-brick exterior of the gym building. He’s fisting fingers into his hair, dragging them back and forth as he leans on his knees. When Eddie sits down beside him without a word of warning, he takes particular note of the distant muffled music. It’s grounding, this sudden reality of the ridiculousness of the situation once the film-like vibes romanticised by the event are killed off by icy cold air and the night’s deafening silence.

“This is, like, the longest I’ve been away from my mom,” Eddie sighs into the air.

“What, _barely_ two days?”

“Yeah, well, that’s a long time for me. You know I almost couldn’t make it tonight?”

At that, Richie looks up at him. “Sonia?” Eddie nods.

“Had to volunteer as some stupid guide for the parents before prom with Ben, so I had a _real_ reason to go, a reason I couldn’t _not go_. She was furious; she knew I tricked her but couldn’t do anything about it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? I’d have _so_ volunteered to do that with you.”

Eddie quirks a smile. “No you wouldn’t.”

“Yeah… maybe not. Sounds boring as fuck.”

It clicked at that moment that Eddie’s mother was the _key_ to his prison cell. She wasn’t the guard he could come to an agreement with, wasn’t the executioner he could plead to, nor the judge he could bribe. He knew he would keep getting caught and locked away again and again unless said key was destroyed. It clicked, how in this analogy, Richie was the sneaking scoundrel endlessly picking the locks for Eddie to escape, and if it weren’t for the Loser’s lockpicks, he would not have known if there was truly anything else for him beyond being a medical experiment to an overbearing mother who needed an emotional punching bag for her own traumas and fears.

It still bothered him, sometimes, thinking this way about his mother. Knowing it all to be true, yet a tiny lingering hope deep within him hoping with a fervent belief that it’s not too late, that he can still have a mother, still have a relationship like the one he thought he had while under her brainwashing spell. _She’s broken too, I can’t hold it against her_ , goes his mantra, like it’s a validating enough excuse to dismiss his own pain. 

“I also couldn’t steal you away from Bev. You were so fucking happy when she arrived.”

“Dude, I was already fucking happy,” he picks up a loose stone from the step below, tosses it in his hand, once, twice. “You were already there,” Richie swings overhead into the parking lot, a distant series of plonks echo into nothingness.

Eddie couldn’t fully understand or comprehend it, what it is that he’s been feeling, and calling it what it was felt like poison on his tongue - until Richie said it; until he spoke about it; until he gave him some much-needed personal reality. It is very much like when you look up your symptoms by yourself and decide you’ve contracted a fatal disease, then when you go to the doctor to get checked up on it, he insists that you are completely healthy, the simple symptoms simply being just that: a natural and normal little hiccup in life, and he lets you go home with a comforting smile, a pat on the shoulder and a caramel sweet.

“Why’d you run, Rich?”

 _To see if you would_. “Dunno. Embarrassed, I guess.”

“ _You?_ _Embarrassed?”_ Eddie gawks. “Unbelievable. About what?” 

_Myself._ “I mean, you made me this kickass corsage, and I didn’t make you anything. That’s just— that’s just unprofessional, Eds.”

“So, what, you just bail on your date in the middle of a dance out of nowhere because you realised all of a sudden that you didn’t glue some fucking plants to some stupid ribbons?”

“Date?”

Eddie flicks him on the forehead. “Yeah, idiot. Get over yourself.” A sigh. “Well, go on, tell me what you would have made for me.”

Richie stares and ponders a little before reaching for Eddie’s right arm, pulling it over his lap. He taps around the wrist and along his forearm like he’s taking mental measurements, taking routine checks, testing the waters. The thing is, is that he has no clue what he would have made. It wasn’t something he thought he’d ever have to think about, so much so that it lay barren even within the confines of his indulgent imagination. 

“I think…” he slides a brushing finger down and to the right, followed by a circle. “I think it’d be red,” The _V_ shape that follows is slow and deliberate. “It’d be a red ribbon I’d fray the edges of, make it all uneven and torn and horrible just to piss you off.” _E._ “I’d pin a dandelion to it - the fluffy kind that you blow on - and you’d immediately rip it off so you wouldn’t, like, get the stem milk on you,” he laughs, hesitating on the last letter on Eddie’s arm. “You’d hate it but I think you’d secretly like it, and when you get home and your mom sees you with this _atrocity_ pinned into your shirt, she’d completely flip, and that’s when… that’s when you’d love it.”

Eddie takes Richie’s hovering hand and writes the final _R_ with him. When Richie finally, _finally_ looks up, he’s met with Eddie’s bashful little grin. 

“Thanks, Richie. I hate it.”

“You’re welcome.”

They settle back into silence, a sorely-missed comfortable secrecy that soothes their guilty consciences and sordid regrets. There’s a fleeting sensation that passes through Richie that warns him he’s used up his quota of second chances that have been handed to him.

“Oh, fuck it,” he gets up and holds out a palm for Eddie, clearing his throat. “Well I say, I believe I owe the kind sir a dance?”

Eddie snatches it, launching to his feet. “ _Ah say, ah say, ah say,_ ” he mimics in his most unflattering Richie voice. “I do fucking believe _so_.”

“ _Oh dear_ , perhaps he’s not so kind after all…”

“Shut the fuck up, Richie,” he laughs.

After taking the four remaining steps down into the parking lot, Richie has one hand on Eddie’s shoulder and the other clasped together with his, while a timid hand rests somewhere on Richie’s side. Richie sways them on the spot from one foot to the other, back and forth, hemming and hawing until he can alleviate the tension. He tilts his head cheekily, faux-coy and innocent, dipping them both wildly low to the left, then to the right, until Eddie finally snorts when he has to catch his balance.

They settle into what they should’ve been all along: all fabric-gripping hands, heads secured against each other’s temples, and clammy intertwined fingers that test Eddie’s strength and patience before he absolutely _must_ comment on them. But Richie’s shy thumb is a trembling brush at the nape of his neck that renders Eddie thoughtless bar one: the thought that _any_ of this was _ever_ supposed to be considered the worst possible thing in the world.

“Eddie… you don’t, like, _like_ me, or anything, right?”

“ _Huh?_ Are you really asking me that right now?”

“‘Cause that’s pretty lame if you do.”

“And that’s pretty _rich_ coming from _you_ , asshole.”

Richie smiles, a little weak. “How long… how long did you… _y’know_.”

“I— it’s not— it wasn’t something I— I didn’t really think about it. Ever.”

“Ever?”

It’s such a pointed question that it falters Eddie. Like Richie’s hoping for or can somehow see a different answer on him opposed to the one he actually gave. Perhaps he never thought about it, never had to, never needed to, never _could_ , but for all he knows, he had felt it. Felt it as naturally as one breathes the air and perceives color without thinking about it, how it works, or why it works; it just _does_ , it just _is_. Felt it in the way you learn your first language from a toddler’s age and never remember how you got to where you are now in fluency, until you try to learn a second language and it’s all you can think about: how on _earth_ did you go about learning a language so fluently that you weren’t even aware of it while it was happening?

“Did _you?_ ” Eddie asks instead.

They’re both pretty grateful that they’re tucked into each other, this raw and frightening kind of openness and honesty being certainly more than what they can currently handle. Still steadily and lazily pivoting on the spot, Richie unclasps their hands and winds his arms around Eddie’s shoulders entirely, an embrace very much like the many he’d give in the past during more blissfully innocent times. Phantom memories of lonesome clashes with Bowers’ gang, of bumped heads at a middle school dance, of a cast-covered arm sandwiched between two bodies. 

“I always did. But it was like… like when you look at someone and go _yep_ , _that’s my best friend. We’re going to be best friends for life, I think_. _I’ll fucking make sure of it, anyway._ That sort of thing.”

“In that case, mine was pretty much the same, except it was more _we’re going to be best friends for life, I think, because I have this feeling that he’s going to make sure of it no matter what I say or do._ ”

“Oh _as_ _if_ you didn’t consider me your best friend. That’s the most dogshit thing I think I’ve ever heard you say, and that’s saying something, because you throw out some _real_ stinkers sometimes, Eds.”

“What the fuck?” Eddie thwacks Richie in the back, unable to pull back and throw a dirty eye his way in his hold. “Besides, of course I fucking consider you my best friend. But where’s the fun in admitting that and letting it go to your head?”

Richie laughs, half into his hair, half into nothing. They fall back into a warm hush, hugged by the cool-aired parking lot winds.

“But then you weren’t just my best friend anymore,” Richie mutters. Eddie swallows. “It was, y’know, _whatever_ at first. Like I used to genuinely believe swallowing apple seeds meant an apple tree would grow inside my stomach when you told me that. So... I wasn’t exactly bothered by some of the shit that went through my head. But…

“But then it was the one thing that never went away. You had your leper, Bill had Georgie, Stan had that hot chick, and that— that was mine. Is. _Is_ mine. I did _everything_ to make it not real, then that fucking clown showed up and It… It _knew._ It just _knew_. And I… after that, I… I couldn’t _not_ think about it. I couldn’t make it _not real_ anymore. So, I’m… pretty much fucked for life now. Pretty— pretty funny, right?”

Eddie’s only response is the tightening of his grip on the back of Richie’s jacket.

“It… showed things to us, remember? Things that weren’t real, or, I don’t know.” Richie swallows. “ _Almost_ every time, It showed you.”

Eddie forcefully pulls back this time, needing to see what else he’s hiding, what else lays buried under his honest and bare words. Because with Richie, there’s always, _always_ , _something_ more. Richie’s arms pull back loosely around him, wanting anything _but_. 

“ _It fucking showed me you,_ ” comes his hissed whisper. “It knew I was _dirty_ before I could figure that out for myself. And— and it just _had to_ use _that_ word, y’know? Like It knew being dirty meant being the thing _you_ hate and fear most.”

“Richie. I hate, and am terrified of… dirt, and bacteria, and illness and disease in the same way you’re terrified of being… you know. You know why I still sometimes believed the things my mom said even after I knew they weren’t true? Because— because I _also_ did everything to make it not real,” he huffs a dry laugh. “Except… I guess I didn’t do _everything_. I only told myself I did, while I let it happen. I’m just not good at pretending like you are.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“Fuck off. What I’m trying to say is you’re not dirty, because you’re what I hate and am scared of the _least_. And even if you are dirty, then— then I am too, and isn’t _that_ fucking something, Rich? Completely spoiled, rotten, contaminated, _whatever_ \- that’s _me_. I’ll be that, so you don’t have to be scared about grossing or freaking me out.”

Richie pulls him in again by the back of his head, circling around tight with his cheek pressed into his hair, mindlessly patting and stroking it.

“You’re not any of that, Eds.”

“Well, if I’m not any of those things then neither are you.”

Richie’s completely overwhelmed with fondness when he presses a dramatic smooch into Eddie’s hair. “If you’re not those things then neither am I,” he repeats. And maybe it wasn’t the smartest idea to kiss him, even if it was just his head, because now it’s all he wants to do. “Besides, those are things you gotta reserve for me when I give you, like, a wet willy or replace your toothpaste with mayo.”

“ _Ough_ , that’s— _Richie_ , shut the fuck up, that’s so gross. You’re not rotten but I’m pretty sure your brain is.”

“ _There_ it is,” Richie grins. “Eddie, can I tell you something?”

“Yeah?” Richie never asks for permission to speak.

He purses his lips before blurting out. “I like you a lot. I like you so much. I like you, and you’re my best friend, and I kind-of-sort-of maybe really… _er_ , I really… _God,_ this sucks. Get it together, Tozier. I—”

“I know,” comes Eddie’s loudly curt and slightly panicked response. He brings them together even closer and drops his head into Richie’s shoulder. “I think I’m going to be sick,” he mutters. 

“ _Jesus,_ Eddie. Because of me?”

“No! No, fuck no. I mean, well, _yeah_ , actually. But not in the way you… not because you… fuck, I can’t fucking talk, dude,” and he’s all shaky laughter and frustrated groans. 

Thankfully, Richie gets it, and tucks himself into the crook of Eddie’s neck. He’ll get another chance to say it - he _needs_ to. What if he died tomorrow? It’s as though now that Eddie _knows_ , the mental timer in his mind counting down to _something_ , something deadly and terrible and horrific, has tripled in speed. He’s trying to understand that he doesn’t really _need_ to say it, but he sure as hell wants to. And because he wants to, that means he _needs_ to. Another thing on his condemned list of wants and desires that he’ll accomplish in due time - each checkmark another successful personal rebellion. 

It has to be _him_ , too. It wouldn’t matter at all if Eddie never said it or felt it back. What mattered is that Richie got to know him, had the luck and chance and opportunity to know him, and if knowing him in such a way as they are knowing each other right this very moment is the most he’ll ever get to know Eddie, then he can die a happy guy. So it _has_ to be him, has to be Richie that says it, so Eddie doesn’t have to. He doesn’t need Eddie to love him, because being able to love Eddie is enough. Has always been enough. 

Through the wall, the DJ bellows over the music as it fizzles out that that’ll be the final slow dance of the night before they go back to upbeat jives and bring the party back to life, and Richie’s somewhat extremely relieved about that. Slow dancing is great, but it’s not for them, he thinks. Not for a fifteen-year-old Richie and Eddie. A forty-year-old Richie and Eddie, perhaps. 

It’s like fate and the universe were watching them when the percussive intro of _Africa_ rumbles distantly and the stars align, immediately perking the pair of them into gawking lopsided open-mouthed grins.

“There is _no_ way they’re playing our fucking song right now.”

Richie can’t help it, blurting out the synth melody along with the intro, a ridiculous array of _bow wah-aw bah-dun-dun-dun’s_ accompanying the swift xylophone-like piano notes, and when the lyrics start, they sing, because they _have_ to. They’re fixed to one another in a relentless grip, refusing to let go, taking every chance and excuse they get to keep their hands on each other, knowing they _can_. In seconds, they’re blessing the rains down in Africa at such an excessive volume it comes as no surprise when a passing stranger screams at them to shut up from across the street. 

Immeasurably giddy, Richie’s lightheartedness arms him with that unstoppable force of _love_ and _loving Eddie_ that he’s allowing himself the opportunity to use - his permission: a self-bought gift that was left to collect dust until it was almost too late to ever be able to take it out and use it. The song fizzles out and Richie’s dragging Eddie by the hand, sprinting down the streets, kicking stones and heel-clicking, playing makeshift games of hopscotch, trying not to step on the cracks and divides of the pavement, mid-step footsie and tackling each other as they spin and try to stomp on each other’s toes, arms simultaneously holding the other away and desperately pulling themselves closer.

It comes as no surprise when they arrive at the Derry arcade. There is a small handful of tired-looking prom-ditchers and seniors in casual wear who were simply thankful for the freebie day off. They give the boys’ rowdy entrance through the rattling glass door a non-committal glance and then they’re back to their own business - it was the perfect crowd. No Bowers, no lackeys of his, and certainly no stupid Bowers cousins either.

“Seriously? _This_ is what you had in mind post-prom? Games? Some stupid fucking—”

Richie’s pushing Eddie’s back and driving him into the photo booth. “To _not have_ any _real prom snaps_ with my _very real date_ would be _sacrilege._ ”

Eddie swallows and freezes a little at his forwardness as he leans against the wall of the booth. Something about how Richie’s joke-flirting isn’t _just_ a joke he can brush off anymore, still coming to terms with the reality that every moment, every interaction, every joke and tease and tip-toe was very much _real_. It hasn’t exactly hit him yet, he thinks. This world-shattering knowledge that alters every memory, every experience, every exchange he ever had with him. Alters in a way one spends an impossible amount of time trying to focus a broken camera lens, until that stubbornness caves and finally agrees to get a replacement. All those adamant years of thinking _this can be fixed_ , _I can fix this, just give me more time, let me take care of this._ Years spent _fixing_ instead of making memories. Eddie wonders how long he’d be focusing that broken lens, desperate to see anything beyond its forever-blur, if tonight didn’t happen.

A photograph is the perfect first step, Eddie thinks, as Richie loads in one of the lucky quarters from Went’s jacket pockets. Something small and tentative and easy to disguise - a dip of a toe in the shallow end of a pool in order to check the temperature first instead of that sudden violent plunge into the deep and seemingly bottomless pit of ice-cold quarry water. 

_Foreign hands gripped at his bare sides with a keen enthusiasm that could only belong to_ one _scamp in their group. Eddie yelped, kicking and shoving against the water’s heavy friction in the hopes of disarming his not-so-mystery assailant, who broke the surface with the boisterous head shakes of a dog, with no morals or etiquette on indoor behavior, stepping inside after being out in the rain. The murky water splattered ripples all around them, and more importantly, directly into Eddie’s face._

 _“Doctor_ — _doct_ — _” a tremendous gasp, “Doctor K! I’m drowning! Need CPR stat! It’s an emergency! Life or death situatio_ — _”_

 _“Yeah?_ Yeah? _Don’t worry, I’m on my fucking way,” and he shoves Richie’s head under the water, trying to hold down his attempts to surface again._

_Richie’s hoisting Eddie up, uplifted above the water that he’s happily drowning in, giving him the air that Richie’s really holding in for Eddie instead of himself, a figurative little ritual until he absolutely must surface at the last second with a wet cackle. He’s grinning like the sun, as blinding as he was blind himself._

_Eddie clamps a hand over Richie’s mouth and starts waggling his tongue at him, a devilish mock-pretense of resuscitation that offers Richie a just-as-devilish opportunity to stick a tongue out against Eddie’s palm in retaliation. A squawk and fake gag and Richie’s crinkled eyes are threatening to shut entirely, his own glee depriving him of the simple pleasures of being able to witness Eddie Kaspbrak._

Here at the arcade, pressing himself against the wall of the booth with arms behind his lower back, Eddie is the one that feels like he’s being pushed underwater this time. While Richie’s selecting options, he pulls out his inhaler and pops the cap. Before he can press it to his lips, Richie snaps his head in its direction and snatches it, pressing the medicating hiss into his own mouth instead. He sends Eddie a pointed look as he does so, then shoves it into a hidden pocket on the inside of his left breast. 

“No,” he gestures a scolding finger.

Richie tugs Eddie over by the shoulder, loosely snaking an arm around him as they attempt to somehow half-sit on the tiny wobbly seat. They start with a strip just like they all did with Bev earlier in the day, but there’s a waver to their mirth; their routine silly faces and poses tamed under testy waters. Was there something more they had to do? Something more that was necessary to prove who and what they were? Would they, as they were, ever be enough?

“Wow, well _these_ are awful,” Richie flicks at the strip he grabbed from outside the booth.

“ _Ugh_ ,” Eddie covers it. “Let’s do it again,” and he’s already fishing for quarters in Richie’s pockets.

“I mean, if we’re gonna do awkward, we may as well go all out,” he pinches at Eddie’s side to make him jump from the seat. “What’s up with you, Eds?”

“I don’t know!” he throws his hands up as soon as he slotted the quarter in. “It’s like, the things we, maybe, _should_ be doing, we can’t. Or we’re not allowed to, or, whatever…”

Richie spins and hugs him from behind, a messy flop of hair dropped against the top of his head. “I like us just as we are.”

“Gross.” Eddie reaches behind and pinches Richie’s nose. “That was gross.”

The next strip attempt is a series of weaving limbs, secret pranks, squished faces and the like: Richie heaving Eddie up who’s been captured mid-yell; flash; Eddie in a loose headlock with the orange tie’s neat bow on Richie’s wrist under his chin; flash; arms posed in paired _S_ shapes; flash; Eddie’s crossed eyes behind Richie’s glasses while Richie upturns his nose with a finger; flash; hands on shoulders and clasped palms in a dance freeze frame with Richie’s glasses still on Eddie’s face; flash.

“ _Eddie-bear… forgetting something_ _?”_ he raises his cheek, those _testy, testy_ waters sloshing around in his head, but he’s finding his repressing filter’s hold loosening by the second, as it always does around Eddie. 

Eddie scoffs, the very image of disgust. “Fuck you, no way.”

It’s a painfully quiet moment as the countdown starts for the last photo until Eddie presses thin, pulled-in lips against Richie’s cheek right before the flash takes its blinding shot. Eddie collects the strip this time, needing to take a look before Richie does; checking, making sure, for _something_. His profile is all furrowed brows and Richie looks positively shocked - still does.

“If you tell anyone, I’ll kill you,” Eddie whispers, handing Richie the incriminating strip, knowing full-well he will. Richie enacts the motion of zipping his lips, locking them, and throwing away the key. 

The photobooth is dusted in darkness save for the dim yellow embedded lamps in the floor and ceiling, and Eddie’s throat is a little dry, completely forgetting that he’s inhabiting a body while in his calm and overly fond daze. It’s a feeling akin to having just come down from a willfully imagined asthma attack that was never real or threatening like his panic attacks were, and the inhaler by Richie’s heart is the last thing on his mind as he craves the medication that is Richie Tozier himself.

Eddie kisses the pads of his own fingers then presses them, testing, experimental, to Richie’s mouth - that filthy, trashy mouth that never knows when to shut up that he knows he’s incapable of staying away from. Richie is unmoving, frozen with bated breath, slumped dumbly in the tiny seat, glazed eyes staring, staring, staring. Eddie pulls his fingers away from Richie’s lips and, after a brief pause of consideration, presses them to his own again. He waits and thinks and relishes and questions: _Why?_

There’s an ease that exists in areas overcast by shadows that obscure what you’d rather not acknowledge. The dark will hide the stain on your clothes, the pimple on your chin, the shine in your eyes and the color in your cheeks that you desperately want to reel back in. A covering cloud of ease that jumps that first impossible hurdle for you, and at the realisation of your capabilities in the safe privacy of the dark, you start _begging_ to be seen, jumping the rest of the hurdles by yourself under exposing daylight: _Because I wanted to. Because I_ could _._

Eddie has jumped his hurdle, and he wants to keep running. In fact, he can’t seem to stop now that he’s begun. Richie’s staring; _anxiety eyes_ , drowning in hesitation and overthinking. Eddie has seen these eyes many times before: during middle school relay races, right before he’d pass the baton onto the next person in line, the person that’s been standing, waiting, mentally biting their nails into dust and overloading themselves with a million ‘ _what if_ ’ scenarios. Richie has been waiting for a baton for years without realising he was even part of a race in the first place. Eddie realises he’s been running on the wrong track this entire time.

“I think this is the longest you’ve ever been quiet,” Eddie breaks the silence, dropping and curling his fingers into Richie’s whose hands are settled limply on his lap.

And Richie is so dumbfounded by the comment, he can’t help the snort and crack of laughter that follows, a cathartic release of pent up burden and fear pulling on the skin on his face, creasing and crinkling into untameable laughter lines. He falls back against the booth, head thudding against the wall and arms holding himself up around the sides as he balances on the small wobbly twisting seat. He’s hit with the discomfort of the half-hanging position he’s in when Eddie, exasperated, tries shoving him off with his shoe. Before he can fall, he lurches forward and drapes himself all over Eddie around his shoulders, hugging him, unlike anyone he’s ever hugged before.

“You’re a menace, Kaspbrak,” Eddie drops with him onto the seat and Richie tucks in, all doofy lop-sided smiles and preening spectacled nose.

“If I’m a menace then you’re a renown wanted criminal.”

“Just call me _public enemy number one_.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, even as a criminal.”

“No, no, you’re right. Almost forgot about Dr K’s serial reputation.” Eddie lets out a humored hum. “Speaking of…” if the hearts weren’t visible in his eyes, they were certainly heard in his voice, entirely lilted by a smitten, _knowing_ , crooked smile. “What now? You’ve taken me to prom… successfully made me fall for you… remind me, what was next on that whole agenda? You know, _before_ you brutally slaughter me?”

“I don’t know… I don’t recall.” Eddie’s flushed and _stupidly_ giddy with smiles, and he _wants_ to say how _stupidly_ ‘ _High School’_ the entire situation was, if only it weren’t for the fact that it quite _literally, stupidly_ , was. “So,” he clears his throat, “So I think I’ll just skip all that stuff in between - probably wasn’t important anyway - and start slaughtering you _now_.”

He’s donned a menacing little grin as he starts pawing at and loosely smacking about Richie’s head, earning the latter’s delighted squawks in response.

“No fair! No fair, dude! You promised!” he shields himself with his arms, the lack of his support causing Eddie to slowly slide off his half-stool-half-Richie seat.

It’s a mess, this _thing_ they’re both in. A mess they’re sure they might not ever make sense of or even dare to clean. They’re both thinking it - _what does this all mean?_ \- and the short answer is that it doesn’t mean anything. The long answer, however, is that it means everything. It means _what will happen tomorrow when the post-bliss reality kicks in?_ It means _how do we go about this since neither of us are girls?_ It means _what are the rules that apply to us?_ It means _Richie do you really have all that dating and kissing and relationship expertise like you always gloat about or are both of us really playing this game as two literal uneducated inexperienced virgins way in over their heads?_

Richie’s observing the photo strip again, one image in particular, thumbing over a sepia-toned Eddie angrily pressing against his cheek. He looks up at Eddie, the photo, and back again, as if checking if they’re even the same person.

With significantly less hesitation than Eddie, Richie taps two fingers against his lips, his own, Eddie’s, and his own again, in a gesturing haste.

“What was that all about, man? That was so full of cheese. Sap-levels skyrocketed to the next galactic system, dude. Can I just kiss you like a sane person?”

Eddie _was_ ready to snap back - keyword: _was_ \- until he pretty much forgot the human language he was born and raised with.

“Too much?” Richie scrunches his face, a physical representation of a recoiling hiss.

“Yeah. Yeah, maybe.”

“Bet you neither of us are even gonna remember any of this.”

“Bet _you_ I think you’re full of shit.”

“I’m, like, ninety percent positive I already went home and I’m sleeping right now and this is all a dream.”

“You dream about going to prom with me and kissing me?”

“Since this is _maybe_ a dream with no consequences whatsoever: _yeah_. Like, all the time.”

“ _Kshh— kshh—”_ Eddie mouths into his fist. “ _Houston? Status report on the sap-levels?_ ”

Richie barks out a laugh. “Who said anything about sap? Maybe it’s all _dirty dancing_ and _hot making out—_ ”

“ _Shhhhhut up_ , shut up, shut up. It’s _not_.”

“It _so_ is.”

“You are so fucking uncool. You ruined it.”

“ _Uncool_ — _yeowch_ , Eds, might need some ointment for that one.”

“Yeah, well…” Eddie shrugs and shakes his head, lost on a fitting response since there really is only one thing on his mind. He quickly taps a finger against his own lips.

Richie double-takes. “What? Seriously?”

He nods.

“Are— are you _sure?_ ”

He shoots him a pointed look, brows raised and adamant.

“Are you _sure_ -sure, though? ‘Cause I was only joking—”

“ _No,_ you fucking weren’t. You _weren’t_. So— just— it’s a dream, okay? You’re dreaming and this isn’t real. So…” he double taps his lips again.

Richie chews on his lip. “Well, okay… but if I ask you if you remember any of this tomorrow and you say no I _might_ cry.”

Eddie can’t help the innocently devilish smile. _He just might._

Richie stares at Eddie’s mouth - not too long, as it still burns him - and swallows shakily. It’s at this most critical stage he curses himself for all his experienced quips and remarks, only really having film kisses and weirdos in school hallways macking before class under his belt. His face quirks a little.

“How the _fuck_ did _Ben_ get to do this before _me?_ How’d he even know _how_ to?”

“Maybe because he just fucking did it and didn’t ask any fucking questions Richie I swear to—”

So he did just that. Nothing more than a hasty peck in which he spent longer pulling away from. He couldn’t tell what it was even like, the loudness of his thoughts blinding the moment and sensation.

Eddie’s lips are ever so slightly parted, yet he can’t decide whether he should be breathing through his mouth or his nose, so both it is. Or neither. He doesn’t know, man.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Can I— can I have my inhaler back now?”

“Uh… _no?_ ”

Eddie gawks at him until a smile creeps its way onto his face. “Okay.”

He pats at his inhaler through Richie’s jacket pocket, two times, making sure it was still there at least. Sometimes just knowing it was in his possession was enough, asthmatic or not.

“Okay,” Eddie repeats, a curt nod, more to himself than anyone else, and he surges forward to press still, unmoving lips against Richie’s. 

Pulls away, presses again, pulls away, presses again - and again and again and again. Richie has not moved a muscle since, and maybe he doesn’t need to. No, not yet. Eddie is taking care of him now. When the impatient smack comes across the side of his head, he knows it’s time to meet him halfway. 

This time, they stay pressed together - still unmoving, but feeling. Feeling the chapped skin, the rise and fall of each gently puckered bump, each curve, the hot air from their noses and proximity, the annoying hard plastic of coke-bottle glasses.

Eddie’s the first to peek an eye open, and the closeness startles him, making him jump away entirely, as though it only just hit him then what they were doing - what _he_ was doing. 

“That— that good, huh?” Richie looks and sounds a little _super_ dumb. 

“Prom sucks,” Eddie blurts out, his red face possibly visible even in the blackest of dark spots. “You suck. This sucks. I hate you. Also… _I hate you._ ”

“That _does_ suck. You hate me? What am I gonna do about our initials on the kissing bridge, then?”

“What? Our what? On the what?” he’s shaking his head feverishly. “You didn’t _actually_ …”

Richie gives him a pathetic little shrug.

“How— how is— how can this shit just- just keep escalating? What else have you done, Tozier? Scribbled in margins? Wrote poetry? Made me a romantic mushy mixtape, different to the one I already have— unless… no- that’s…” Richie opens his mouth— “ _No._ No.”

“I can make you another if you want?”

“You better make me a thousand of the fucking things.”

“Challenge accepted. For the record, I would _never_ write poetry.”

Eddie bores into him. “Did you _really_ carve our initials? Into the— the _bridge? That_ bridge?”

“Listen, man, that was a weird summer, so much shit was going on—”

Eddie kisses him. No reason, really. He just knows he can. It’s that simple simplicity of the motion that thrills him the most. Just one of the many thousand new bonuses that came with this _thing_. It was the perfect time for the photo booth to be activated, what with him feeling like the very picture of health. The front-cover-of-a-pamphlet-at-the-doctor’s-office picture of health. He dares, _dares_ the security at the museum to pull him away from his favorite painting _now_. There is no restorer or reproducer on earth that will _ever_ be able to recreate his lingering kiss marks, a secret taunt, hidden in plain sight.

“Okay, hold on, hold on,” Richie breaks off. “Scratch what I said - I think I’m going to write a whole book of poetry tonight. This fucking rules.”

“ _That good, huh?”_ Eddie mocks in a low voice.

“ _Good?_ Eds, try _best, greatest, most excellent thing_ that has ever happened to me in my entire life. Okay, maybe except spending a lunch period in the library sorting books,” Richie throws up two fingers. “ _Second_ best, greatest, most excellent thing that has ever happened to me.”

“Don’t call me Eds.” Eddie’s wily smile exudes fondness. “What’s the third?”

“Every time you say that.”

“ _Ough._ ”

“ _I know, I know,_ I almost puked saying it. Sadly, it’s true.”

“ _Christ,_ I hate you.”

“Hate you, too. Hate you so much like you wouldn’t believe. Come over for dinner tomorrow? Mom’s making cauliflower cheese.”

“Oh, _fuck you._ With the crumbs?”

“With the crumbs.”

* * *

The next morning, on a non-alcohol induced hangover kind of Saturday, the Losers lounge in the clubhouse, bundled to the teeth in warm hoodies and soft sweaters galore. 

The thing is, in no way, shape, or form was the night before the dream that Richie was so sure it was. It just so happened to be the ten percent of reality that he feared so much, but he quickly learned he had, in fact, nothing to fear; several coy exchanges of quick, knowing glances and typical charged disguised touches throughout the day kept him warm and buzzed without the need of his layers. 

This _dirty little secret_ was mutual. Mutual with one of the most headstrong-on-cleanliness guys he knows, so he’s not worried. Give him a couple days and it’ll be the most pristine stainless little secret known to mankind.

Bill nudges Richie’s knee with his foot, snapping him from his more intense than usual Eddie-staring-trance, gesturing for his turn to spin during their game. The bank pays him his earnings and he collects another _Life_ tile. It’s of course when he’s barely paying attention that _this_ is when he decides to crush the game. His lack of smarmy comments and quips are almost worrying if it weren’t for his permanent dopey smile. 

When Eddie privately grins and shakes his head to himself, Stan does the same, and so does Ben, and Beverly also, and maybe Mike does too.

Bill notices. “I kn-know, right?” he says, “He’s _actually_ going to win his- his first _Game of Life._ ”

**Author's Note:**

> i know there’s usually a big prom dance event at the end of middle school but a lot of this is written from my own experiences with dances and we had them pretty much every year. the dances we had were low-effort last-second things that i feel a school in a small outskirts town like derry would also have. the first time we had a fancier and grander actual proper typical prom was like.. at the end of high school and it only happened because the students started a petition and got the whole school to sign it, wanting at least One special school event to celebrate in all 12 years of education. derry’s student body really feels like that kind of student body to me, one that would do anything to feel significant and stereotypical in an off-the-map environment that otherwise could care less or devote any time or money or resources for frivolities they deem unimportant such as a school dance.
> 
> funny how i wrote this for my birthday and i'm posting it a month later on eddiebrak's birthday, op of the school dance au gifset that made me insane... happy birthday!!!!!
> 
> thank you so much to anyone who reads this and of course kudos + comments are appreciated <3
> 
> ps: > [bev's dress](https://66.media.tumblr.com/977e3b7992c2b30336a454b08f931e69/d7d3b16c51695992-ff/s1280x1920/5821da3169be40e2d5420baf0ba8f6a013396be4.png)
> 
> i’m b0x @ tumblr!


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